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Mechelen, Belgium
ABATTOIR FERMÉ: This Belgian company likes to shock its audience. If you know its previous work, what might shock you most about its new piece, Deviant, is that it's a well-made play. Abattoir's last two premieres, Tour-niquet and Hard-Boiled, contain scarcely an utterance between them-both prefer impressionistic sequences to narrative. Tour-niquet is set in a world marked by swastikas, exorcisms and crucifixions, along with plenty of nudity, wine and blood. Artistic director Stef Lernous insists that Hard-Boiled, which premiered in October, is a "girly play," with light music performed by an all-female ensemble. Its scenario is that the soul of a young woman washes up on shore, where "weird psychic doppelgangers" torment her. Lernous pauses. "This sounds nasty, doesn't it? I assure you, it's all in good fun. She talks to goldfish. She has tea with her dolls. It's very humane." Another pause. "Okay, she does end up at a strip club fucking a dog. I just can't resist!"
So what prompted Lernous to follow up with civilized living-room conversation? "I want to hear people talk again," he says, crediting his renewed interest in dialogue in part to David Mamet. Thanks to a campy '60s documentary about key parties, he hit on a topic: spouse-swapping. "Belgium is such a manageable little country," he says. "I was anxious to know if we have swinger clubs-and we do! On the first Wednesday of the month,...