West Pier (play)
Plot
Plot
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There are eight characters.
* Maurice Koch, 60 years old; Monique Pons, 42\.
* Cécile, 60; her daughter Claire, 14; her husband Rodolfe, 58; and their son Charles, 28\.
* A boy about 22 with the surname Fak.
* An unnamed man about 30, whom Charles calls Abad a few times.

The setting, a derelict warehouse in an abandoned section of a port city, is a kind of character as well, both space and non\-space, empty but real. Plot, wrote one critic, "was never Koltès's strength", yet he essayed a brief summation: "a suicidal financial wizard and his girlfriend, a homeless Latin American family and two creepy opportunists engage in a hellish but often funny battle in which everyone is both predator and prey", concluding with "a couple of spectacular murders that seem so natural they are cathartic". Another offers this precis: "The action tells the story of Maurice Koch, a businessman who jumps into a river after parting from his secretary Monique Pons. He is pulled out by Charles, whose relatives hope to gain from the rescue. The plot is based on exchange and trafficking and plays on the apprehension of the other and of oneself."

The characters come from opposing worlds and never should have met. Their face\-to\-face encounter forces the conflicts of the modern world to the fore: immigration, social displacement, poverty, the right to dignity. The director is challenged to present this chance meeting "at the crossroads of trivial and poetic" and needs "actors\-monsters" with "an exceptional physical and vocal presence" to deliver Koltes' "splendid text", often in the long monologues typical of Koltes.


Why do the characters' relatives hope to gain from the rescue?