“Sex is part of nature. I go along with nature.” (Marilyn Monroe)

From the moment they first got together in 2005, Les Chiens de Navarre have invested every performance with their direct and surrealistic style. Stretching fragments of reality to the point of caricature, this French collective delves fearlessly into the primal impulses that drive our everyday behaviour. Worked and re-worked through group improvisations and scenarios conjured by director Jean-Christophe Meurisse, our social masks and trite conversations come out the worse for wear. In this unconventional theatre, riding the edge of theatre of cruelty and Dadaism, the violence of the subconscious sparks a joyous and dangerous deflagration. At once cynical, genial, childlike and clownish, the actors’ performance propels the show along the slope of a regression that leaves the audience both delighted and bewildered by such impertinence. This explosive recipe has been tried and tested in such successful productions as Quand je pense qu’on va vieillir ensemble, Une raclette, and Regarde le lustre et articule. The high-spirited collective makes its NAC debut with Les armoires normandes (“the Norman wardrobes”), a show that has toured extensively and gathered a cult following in the process. Strangely, no Norman wardrobes actually appear, but that doesn’t stop Les Chiens de Navarre from giving free rein to a nonconformist theatre that celebrates the moment with furious humour.