LA BALISE – Iphigénie à Splott

Effie is the kind of girl you don't look in the eye when you see her in the street, you judge her casually. You think you know Effie, but you don't know the half of her. Every Monday, she throws herself into a spiral of alcohol and drama, emerging after three days with a hangover worse than death, only to start all over again. And then, one evening, she gets the chance to be more than that.

Splott is where the play's author, Gary Owen, grew up. He knows these neighbourhoods like the back of his hand. He knows their characters, their hospitals and their doctors' waiting rooms too. And then the name sounds almost like a wet old rag falling on a muddy floor, something that creates a particular mental image in your mind. That's for Splott.
What does Iphigenia have to do with it? Iphigenia is the young Greek girl, daughter of Agamemnon, who was sacrificed by her father to appease the anger of the goddess Artemis during the Trojan War. The legend is uncertain and, like all good mythological stories, a little twisted, but it highlights the idea of the sacrifice of a young woman for the good of an entire people. We'll come back to the fascinating details of the myth in the historical section. Inspired by Greek mythology, Gary Owen has invented a modern-day Iphigenia, combative, funny and furious, to speak of the social classes that have been hardest hit by the drastic cuts to health and social budgets.

Running time: 1hr 30mins.