In 'Marketplace 76', Needcompany gives us a shockingly unpleasant and perverse, but also hilarious, portrait of our Western society and the way we cope with traumas. It’s summer and party time in the village. Well, maybe party isn’t the right word: the village is commemorating the dramatic day when an explosion robbed the village of numerous lives and its lust for life. The blame lay not with a terrorist act, but an exploding gas cylinder at a market stall. Since that time the fountain of love on the marketplace has been enclosed in scaffolding, and is dry and as infertile as the rest of the village. ‘We’re going to tell you a story, but you will have to help a bit yourself’, says the director Jan Lauwers at the start. In 'Marketplace 76' he himself appears onstage as a master of ceremonies, narrator and commentator on this Greek tragedy. That’s what it closely resembles, when you see how much misfortune these villagers have to put up with. As if the explosion was not enough, on the day of the commemoration one of the surviving children jumps out of a window. His mother, the baker, commits suicide at precisely the moment when her other child, who has been missing for some time, is finally able to free herself – she has been locked up in the catacombs under the fountain for 76 days, forced to be a sex slave by the plumber. In the meantime the butcher’s wife, who no longer wants to be a burden to her husband, laments the situation from her wheelchair. In his vivid orange outfit, Sweeper, the street-cleaner – no name, just a job title – casts a sorrowful eye over all this. He receives reinforcement from above when a lifeboat of plastic animals crashes from the sky, with a certain Squinty on board. Together with Sweeper he makes up the wordless masses of immigrants who are washed up on the shore. They live in huts on the outskirts of the village and are snubbed by the villagers. But, in their bright orange suits, they are not just labourers, but monks who convert increasing numbers of villagers to a belief in a new world order. However, true salvation comes in the form of the plumber’s mail-order bride, the exotic Kim-Ho, who finds herself locked up for complicity in her husband’s misdeeds. In the end it will be this ‘Michelle Martin’ who, as a whore, revives the lust of the villagers and makes the spring fertile once again, by giving birth to an extraordinarily big baby. Devil in one’s own mind This story doesn’t require a lot of imagination, whether it is the fiction of Lars Von Trier’s Dogville or the reality of Dutroux’s Marcinelle that it reminds us of. 'Marketplace 76' can be read as an alternative Catholic parable, a social manifesto, a satire on commemorative ceremonies, and a democratic legal system in which no one dares take responsibility, and a lot more. In its form it is a composition that spans the four seasons, expresses the horror and humour of German cabaret, combines Brechtian theatre with grand opera, and sets kitsch off against a punk attitude. On occasions it is painful to both eyes and ears: the imperfection of the group singing gives you goose-flesh; in its pared-down aesthetics, the dance is at odds with the chaotic emotions; and the rapist dangles farcically high above the stage. We see Jan Lauwers on the sidelines playing music and providing commentary and watching his show, his danse macabre, with great delight. Directing is playing God and the devil in one’s own mind. […] Lauwers boldly throws his vision at our feet like a fragmentation bomb, and that means you don’t emerged untouched. This production has more incredible ideas than many other performing artists have in their whole career. Only the truly great have this gift: not having to be sparing with inspiration. An inexhaustible source.