After a first run cut short by the pandemic in March 2020, the play L’Inframonde is back at the Fred-Barry room of the Théâtre Denise-Pelletier, dragging its share of troubling questions in its wake.

Indeed, we come away shaken from this gem of a show written by the American Jennifer Haley, translated by Étienne Lepage and directed by Catherine Vidal. This hyper-disturbing science fiction thriller, set in a dangerously imminent future, features a detective (Rose-Anne Déry, very accurate) responsible for investigating a shady character from the Underworld, who calls himself Papa.

The Underworld? This is the name given to a very sophisticated virtual platform where users in total immersion can satisfy all their impulses. Including those who are condemned in reality.

Dad reigns as king over an immersive virtual game called Refuge where flesh and blood humans hide behind avatars to make gestures that we won’t reveal here. But think of the worst in humanity.

But is following your baser instincts, hidden behind an avatar, moral? Can the laws of the concrete world apply in a digital universe? Is suffering released into a virtual life where everyone can act with impunity? Huge philosophical debate! Because after all, the sensations and emotions experienced by the player-users of the Underworld remain very real…

As director, Catherine Vidal succeeded in creating two diametrically opposed universes on Fred-Barry’s small stage: one cold and detached, the other dreamlike and soothing. Which only adds to our confusion… The performers – Igor Ovadis and Anaïs Cadorette Bonin in the lead – also demonstrate an aplomb that must be underlined.

In short, we emerge from this dystopia completely stunned, torn by moral dilemmas that all of humanity will be forced to think about sooner or later. Because with the rise of artificial intelligence, the Underworld could very (too?) quickly move from fiction to reality.