« Henry Adam’s Among Unbroken Hearts (2000): Man’s Desperate Quest for Freedom »

International audienceRay has just inherited his granny’s home after her death and he’s back to where he belongs. What he thinks will be the matter of a couple of days sorting things out, may turn into a much longer stay and may put an end to his long wandering and search. Depressed and lost, hooked on heroin, Ray faces his life and himself for the very first time, and he has to consider what his quest for freedom has finally led him up to. The topic is examined through a quartet of very different personæ trapped in a dramatic huis-clos and in their own forms of escapism. Will Neil and Marion succeed in their own fights for life? Will they make their dreams come true? Despite the pessimistic turn of the play, the spectator wishes some hope may survive.Through this somehow autobiographical play, Henry Adam explores the deep longings and failings of Man, revisiting a certain number of ‘myths’ through a coherent theatrical transtextual network. His use of a mixture of Scots, Scottish dialect, sociolect (Junkies’ idiolect not to say specific jargon) and English reverberates the characters’ desires to liberate themselves from the bonds of the past (roots), from the alienating others and from their painful selves.This ‘heart rendering’ process is magnified through the Peter Pan syndrome looking glass and motivated by some misconceptions favoured by optimistic ideas and discourses on human potential