In 1933, the Papin sisters, two quiet and obedient servants from Le Mans, stood in court for what the media called ‘the most horrific murder of the century’. The fascination quickly grew amongst the public and the thinkers of the time. Before long, everyone seemed to have something to say about the sisters. Court hearings and psychiatric expertises debated whether the girls were mad or just plain bad. Plays were written, psychoanalytic theories were formed and political agendas served. But the accused stayed mute.

With Folie a Deux we plunge into a world where reality is stranger than fiction. The play is our attempt to reconstruct the truth through the careful and poetic piecing together of all the key elements of the case. We want to tell the whole story in all its comical and tragic detail. Mixing fact and fiction, French and English, devised and verbatim material, we set off on a hallucinatory investigation where nothing is what is seems.

Folie a Deux is The Maids meet Itchy and Scratchy, it is a plea for the anti hero, a satire on justice and misogyny, an ode to the fantasy of killing your boss (and mother). Most of all, it is a wild ride into the heart of our murderous desires.

The first version of the show was performed with Caron Pasco in the role of 'Madame'. Since then, we have killed her off and taken the story into a new direction, centering it on the two sisters. Caron was not harmed in the process.