Twenty-five years have passed since Marie NDiaye published her first novel at the age of 18, but all of her work seems to be written from that liminal stage of early adulthood. “Les Grandes Personnes,” her newest play, makes the same devastating critique of “big people” or grown-ups, seen from the perspective of their children, as do novels like En famille (1991) and Rosie Carpe (2001).

In these, progeniture are spurned, humiliated and prevented from becoming responsible social actors by parents wholly engrossed in their self-obsessions and crushing demands to be loved, with sordid consequences for all. What do parents owe their children and they them? “Les Grandes Personnes” exposes different points of view, but as always with Marie NDiaye, no easy answers can be pulled from her ostensibly banal worlds that teeter on the edge of fantasy, horror and the grotesque.

NDiaye uses multiple situations to develop her theme, beginning with Eva and Rudi, abandoned years ago by their son and daughter but haunted by the girl’s ghost, and Georges and Isabelle whose daily happiness revolves around their boy, the village schoolmaster and an example of filial piety in the eyes of all. The couples deliberately contrast each other; Eva and Rudi’s defensive, self-centered bourgeois whose overbearingness has driven their children away are unsympathetic at first glance, compared to their frank and loyal, working class friends Georges and Isabelle, but the latters’ invasive involvement in their “model” son’s life has made him into a lonely and angry pederast. Who is responsible? When is “love” both not enough and too much? The “Maître”’s confrontation with Mme. B, the son of one of his victims, suggests yet another couple ostensibly concerned with the fate of its young charges and fatally unable to defend them, the one because of illness, the other because of her outsider status in the community, further complicating the question.

The psychological and emotional power parents exercise over their children is little discussed these days, in the age of the “enfant roi” or materially spoiled brat, in our hyper-consumer societies. NDiaye’s deliberately monstrous situations are like a suicide attempt by a teenager looking for help : in “Les Grandes Personnes” , they beg the question whether, now that we can give our children everything (schools, therapists, tutors, vacations, iphones…) we haven’t missed something essential…

Exaggerated at times, too literal at others, Perton’s direction tries to strike a balance between NDiaye’s disturbing juxtapositions of what is real and what can only be imagined. This is most obvious in the Hitchcockian menace which hangs over the set, with huge crows immobilized above the actors’ heads and their croaks floating behind the dialogue. In that world of impending danger, the characters seem to run even more blindly to their disastrous ends.  The production is carried by a uniformly strong cast, led by Evelyne Didi as the blunt and finally lucid Isabelle while Adama Diop’s prodigal son and Aïssa Maïga’s outraged Mme B. lend a welcome brush of humility, humanity and real courage to the other-worldly proceedings.

To April 3, Tues, 7:30 pm, Wed-Sat, 8:30 pm, Sun, 3:30 pm, English subtitled performances, March 22, 7:30 pm, April 2, 8:30 pm, Théâtre national de la Colline, 15 rue Malte-Brun, 20e, Mº Gambetta, 19-27 euros, tel: 01.44.62.52.52.

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