There’s a lot to admire about Caroline Guiela Nguyen’s 3 hour play, Lacrima. Although more of an ‘experience’ than a play (it runs without an interval), it threads personal and professional storylines across three locations in Alençon, Paris and Mumbai.
An English princess is going to be married, and her dress will be the talk of the world. In Paris, under the watchful supervision of the chef d’atelier, Marion (the astonishing Maud Le Grevellac), the design and delivery of the dress itself comes to life.
The lacemakers of Alençon tackle the restoration of a veil which, we are told at the end, will only be worn for 27 minutes. It will take over 2,000 hours of work by six women to assess and repair the delicate motifs.
In Mumbai, one Muslim man, Abdul (a touching Charles Vinoth Irudhayaraj) is responsible for the embroidery of some 250,000 pearls on the train, taking over 1,500 hours. The contrast between his working conditions and the entitled expectations of both the designer Alexander (who seems to be perpetually travelling and only seen on Zoom) and the princess is probably the hardest hitting bit of the play.
There’s one moment where, after an eye medical, Abdul’s future is discussed in a language he can’t understand while a camera stays on him in tight close-up.
The video work is as strong and essential as the work on stage. We can’t always see characters when they are obscured in different working areas, but the camera captures them.
It also goes close-up on more personal moments within a podcast with the lacemakers, and in a moment when one character receives a disturbing voicemail.
The plotlines are varied and sometimes close to those we might expect in soap opera. There are family secrets and hidden illnesses, marital violence and accusations, a troubled daughter – in fact, in each story there is a daughter who wants something specific from their relation.
There are issues around the ethics and protections of workers, showing the positive effects on the lacemakers who, once unionised, gained control over their health and safety.
Split screens help us see what is happening in each place, and showcase the close-up work we wouldn’t be able to see in a straightforward stage production.
There’s a framing device focusing on Marion, and a stark text coda telling us how much labour went into this dress just so it can be worn once and then put on show in a museum.
Lacrima has just ten on-stage performers, many multi-rolling, and most always on the go. Dinah Bellity’s Thérèse, the oldest of the lacemakers, and Liliane Lipau’s Susanne, the mother who sees no wrong in her abusive son, are particularly powerful.
In Mumbai, Rajarajeswari Parisot is good as both peacemaker and translator for Vasanth Selvam’s conflicted and excitable workshop boss.
The majority of the dialogue is in French, with English subtitles. There is some spoken dialogue in both English and Tamil, with one sequence in French Sign Language.
It would have been helpful for all dialogue to be subtitled as at times, there was sometimes an issue with audibility or clarity, but this only affected a small part of the play.
Alice Duchange’s set offered a variety of white desks and pristine spaces for the cloth, lace and beads to be worked on. It seamlessly blended with Jérémie Scheidler’s video work, which teamed video calls and live capture with text, exposition, and static images.
I should also mention the evocative music of Jean-Baptiste Cognet, Teddy Gauliat-Pitois and Antoine Richard, that underlined the emotional aspects of the story.
Lacrima has a lot to convey in its episodic and epic structure. Some storylines don’t quite fully develop and are sidelined, and apart from the recurring theme of the podcast, the veil and its restoration gets the least amount of time or description.
I liked the fact we didn’t always know from the placing on the stage where we were, and I felt there was a much larger cast than there was due to the skill of blocking, direction, and movement.
The 3 hours flew by, and I was invested in what was going on throughout. As a criticism of the transient nature of haute couture and the exploitation of those involved in it, the play makes some very pointed and potent observations.
I felt frustrated, angry and shaken by the end of Lacrima (which literally means ‘tears’) at the stupidity of those who seek out the impossible without any thought for those further down the chain making it happen.
4 stars.
The UK premiere of Lacrima by Caroline Guiela Nguyen is at the Barbican Theatre 25-27 Sep 2025. Tickets from £16 available here barbican.org.uk.
Image credit: Jean-Louis Fernandez