Outside: the city is full of corpses.

Outside: the revolution rages.

But inside this house of illusions we deny even death entrance; here you may die and live again, here we make death part of the evening's entertainments.

Amongst the mirrors and chandeliers of The Grand Balcony you may find consolation. Within these edifices the revolution does not exist. Forget the outside world, shed your skin and be whoever you want to be. Madame Irma and her girls are here to provide for you an evening of illusion and enchantment, at a most reasonable price.

Welcome to The Grand Balcony, straddled halfway between bordello and theatre. A show in which you are welcome to participate.

Everything can be as real or false as you desire.

Take the narrow road round the back, watch out for the snipers and let us entertain you while the city burns.

 

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Gothic whores, cynical madames and taxi-drivers with illusions of grandeur share the stage in this dark, surreal piece. The sexy, self-aware aesthetic of the burlesque and the 1920s pinup is brought to the French bordello. It's all about smoke and mirrors. Theatre as a kind of voyeurism; sexuality as power.

The perfect play for a student company: the fantasy peddled by The Balcony is really that of an eternal childhood. The revolution is the outside world: death, chaos and 9-to-5 desk jobs.