On an abandoned lot, Joe talks to his puppet. He cannot bring himself to abandon it and so concludes that he must kill it. He then hits it several times with a brick. At home, his mother is most evidently drunk. She indicates a house and forces him to set it on fire. Joe then meets with his friends and lets them know what he is about to do. At that moment, Stranger, a child none of the other children knows, arrives, but he is soon driven off the lot. Joe’s friends make a deal: one by one, as the dummy is lying on the ground, they drop a brick on it and promise to keep Joe’s secret. The latter sets the house on fire. When he learns that a young boy has died in the fire, he decides to run off to Peterborough with his friends. Before they leave, a man faints before them. The children take care of him and carry him on a stretcher. Once on the road, the world seems to have turned into a wasteland. Some children begin to disappear. Some do not want to continue on carrying the man, although Joe refuses to abandon him. Others are accused of having gone to the police to tell on them. But then the man kills a child with a brick during the night. After the man murders Joe’s remaining friends, the latter is alone. Stranger comes back as a ghost and tells Joe that he has forgiven him. The man from the stretcher is in fact Stranger’s father, and he still wants to kill the child who caused the fire. The play ends with a very short scene, in which Joe says he is “the last person in the world”.

Mannequin

Actor and puppet

Young audiences

Bond Edward

Great Britain

London

Cambridge

Printed

Child

Violence

Conflagration

Revenge

Phantom

Dramatic

Tragic

Fantastic

Edward Bond, The Children &amp; Have I None, 2000.

English

Ghost

Mother

Murderer

Blow with an object

Wandering

Actor speaking to an object

Massacre scene

Apparition of a ghost

Murder on stage

The Children

Les Enfants

Anselme Sablefin, "a man of a certain age", fights against time. He does everything he can to silence the hands of his watch. But they only do as they please, despite his threats and physical attacks. On his birthday, Anselme invites his friend Pascal Beaurivage over and takes out the cake from last year’s birthday, which “had entirely faded and looked all stale and inedible”. Faced with Beaurivage’s sadness, he brings out a second cake, a fresher and mouth-watering one – the birthday cake’s birthday cake. Everytime Anselme cuts a slice, shapes suddenly come out, reminding him of various periods of his life.When Sonia, Beaurivage’s daughter, asks him to cut the last slice of the cake, a huge, red heart and tears suddenly appear. He dies, but comes back to life right after, and they all eat the cake together.