ARCHIVES 2000 / L'Apocalypse joyeuse (The Joyful Apocalypse)

Aware that the end is near for him, a father calls for his two sons. Acamas (the legitimate son) and Orion (a foundling child and illegitimate) to bid his farewell. He gives Orion an object that he had promised to Acamas - a small gold fish, a jointed key ring. Orion leaves with it and Acamas vows to regain this token inheritance that was to have been his. Horn enters at this point, and uses all available ruses to try to obtain the golden fish for himself. Like in a mediaeval mystery (the play could have been called Orion's Game), in each episode, Horn introduces a new comic trick so that an infinite number of tribulations follow "en abime". After La Servante in Avignon (1995) and Le Visage d'Orphée (1996), Olivier Py's new work uses allegories intertwined with episodes to tell once again that story of the eternal conflict between Man and the Devil and the eternal pact between God and human beings. It's also a way of looking back critically at the last century, a judgment by a moralizing and joyfully furious poet.