Le Mental de l'équipe

This comedy features two rival professional football teams playing a match. Players follow their trainer’s instructions for tactics and are mentally prepared by a psychiatrist working to maintain the team’s mental strength. Monod, one of the players, is almost retired and suffers from a lack of recognition and success. He wants to seek damages after being knocked down by an impetuous defender. The climax of the play is dilated in time: one of the players must shoot a free kick, but which one? Granger, the perpetually cheerful team’s usual go-to, or Monod and his wounded soul? Meanwhile, the rest of the action occurs, in the form of a stage inside the mind, a mental field taking over the actual one. The audience takes a glimpse inside the mind of a man trying to convince himself and others that it is not too late, that he can score the goal. […] What if the artist in him was to wake up to shoot the free kick?” This is how Denis Podalydès talked about directing this “football fantasy” in 2007. He circled back to it along with his Troupe colleagues to offer a Table version which is sure to have the audience hooked.

ONLINE THUR, MAY 16 AT 8.30 P.M