Les bas-fonds / Nachtasiel

“We do what we can with what we have… that is to say, not much!”
Nachtasiel – in English The Lower Depths – is the first and best known play by Maxim Gorky. The Russian writer creates a gallery of portraits of the marginalized in pre revolutionary Russia. Lame, broken, wounded and brought together in a night shelter at the mercy of a couple of slum landlords, they try to survive. Until the arrival of a tramp who fills them, at least maybe, with hope.

Fourteen Dutch speaking and French speaking actors play these abandoned members of society. Playwright Tom Dupont has adapted the text after lengthy research at a homeless shelter: Nachtasiel baldly describes their lot and brutally asks the question: how can we tolerate such poverty?

In exposing the situation that these people find themselves in as an accusation to the rest of us Raven Ruëll demonstrates the cruel truth; and it is impossible this time to ignore that in our cities, misery devours so many lives on our watch.