An identity crisis  for the theater itself, Luigi Pirandello’s 1921 epitome of absurdism is a masterpiece of blurred dramatic lines, brought cleverly to life in this production from director Emmanuel Demarcy-Mota and Théâtre de la Ville, Paris.

A dysfunctional family of six interrupts the rehearsal of a play to make a curious claim: They are characters who’ve been abandoned by their author and are seeking a theater troupe to give them an artful sense of completion. On a spare set, portrayers and portrayed begin to overlap, as fiction and reality follow suit. The result is a beguiling tragedy that turns notions of authorship and agency on their heads while offering humanity critical insight into its own selectively scribed existence.