Compagnie Rhapsodie

Following the success of the production of Patients* in May 2003 at Theatro Technis in London, Compagnie Rhapsodie is bringing to the stage the UK premiere of Onysos The Wild by celebrated contemporary French playwright Laurent Gaudé, in its first English translation. Deep within a New York subway station a dirty and wrinkled tramp addresses us. As he begins to recount his life story, he reveals himself as Onysos, the god of ecstasy and desire, and takes us back to the antiquity of his birth, inviting us to plunge the inner depths of humanity with him. This play, one of the first written by the winner of the Prix Goncourt 2004 (the French equivalent of the Booker Prize) will open Theatre 503's season in London from 13 until 25 September. Onysos The Wild is a co-production between Compagnie Rhapsodie and Theatre 503, which is renowned for discovering contemporary plays and playwrights. This co-production benefits from the support of French institutions in London. The translation - the result of a fruitful collaboration between new British playwright Adrian Penketh and French translator Dominique Chevallier - will be played by the promising Chris Porter. Director Séverine Ruset thus describes the play: « I believe Onysos the Wild to be of great importance to our era. It explores our latent savageness, a darkness ' within us and the world ' which we tend to repress rather than confront. Onysos reminds us with great fury the simple truth that demonisation can only breed suffering, a truth that extremists of all kinds would like us to forget ».