• Pirandello’s As You Desire Me: Capturing the beautiful and dangerous ideal on stage

    The lights come up on a woman, assailed. Blindfolded, she vaults across the stage, dancing in and out of the embrace of a group of lusting men. Are these assailants her lovers or attackers? The audience hesitates: is it witnessing a debauched party, or is a more sinister violation being committed against this blinded figure ?  As You Desire Me’s opening scene premises a play in which different perceptions of reality are pushed onto the stage, competing for legitimacy and power. The ‘unknown woman,’ ultimately a nameless entity, is a figure in which these competing realities clash. Chloé Réjon plays her with…