The Firebugs

By Max Frisch

Senseless acts of violence threaten to spread fire and fear like a burning cancer. The populace, meanwhile, sit idly by, clinging to moral platitudes as their world crumbles around them. No, it's not the War on Terror, it's The Firebugs, Max Frisch's deeply disturbing yet wickedly funny play presented by nimbus.

The Firebugs is a dark comedy about self-deception and moral flaccidity in the face of impending disaster. When, the play asks, do victims become accomplices to their own demise? In a town wracked by a string of arson attacks, the bourgeois socialites Christian and Babette Betterman allow two shady vagabonds to move into their attic. As it becomes increasingly obvious their guests are really firebugs, the spineless protagonists exhibit a political cluelessness and comic human despair that is strikingly relevant to our times.

February 18 - March 6, 2005

The Ensemble