Actor Samuel Labarthe turns Nicolas Bouvier’s fever-drenched memoir The Scorpion-Fish into a hypnotic, miniaturist tour de force: marooned in 1950s Ceylon after a headlong road trip from Geneva through the Balkans and Afghanistan, the once-ebullient traveller spirals into tropical delirium, trading human company for buzzing insects, mirage-bright visions and mordant humour that flits between the sublime and the grotesque. Under Catherine Schaub’s finely gauged direction, Labarthe channels both the lush lyricism and the slow-burn torment of this “motionless voyage,” distilling Bouvier’s languid prose into a tactile, rejuvenating elixir that lets the audience feel every bead of sweat, jolt of wonder and sting of isolation.
In French. Ages 12 and up.
