This is not the first time that Joao César Monteiro leads us into his very personal world through a fragment from world literature. Le bassin de JW opens with a performance of August Strindberg’s play Inferno. Monteiro’s alter ego Joao de Deus (John of God) plays Lucifer, his opposite number Henrique plays the God who created Man so he could sit back and enjoy their wars and vanity. De Deus is also the director of the play and Henrique is an adventurous seaman who sees divinity personified in the pelvic gyrations of John Wayne. His fascination with this western hero leads him towards the North Pole. When De Deus introduces Henrique to the writer God, who decides to write a screenplay in which the two men encounter another mythical figure, Ariane (symbol of freedom), the two rival’s gloves are off. Ariane is at stake in their conversations as they crisscross town. Monteiro plays a game with our views on God and Lucifer. Both in the world on stage and in the real world where his protagonists can be found, the double director shows us round the holiest ideas of our civilisation like a real iconoclast. With a feeling for humour and irony, he conjures up a world in which God is eventually the only one who can take advantage of his freedom; the remnants are for mankind.
