Jean-Pierre Ronfard's Vie et mort du Roi Boiteux, an impressive six-play cycle telling the story of King Richard ‘Premier’ (i.e. ‘The First’, but Premier is meant here as a family name, as would be Jones or Smith), was created in 1981 and has been seen ever since as a landmark in the recent evolution of Québécois drama. It starts out as games played by children in a back lane and focuses on a limping boy who will be king. The limping king whose story is told as a ‘play-within-a-play’ refers to Oedipus's club foot as well as to Shakespeare's deformed Richard III. The story is heavily parodic, set simultaneously in all parts of the world and at all times, so that Marilyn Monroe and Queen Nefertiti can meet, as well as Brecht and Aristotle. Each play has been staged separately, but the full cycle was occasionally done in succession, a spectacular event lasting fifteen hours. The subject of this article is the very first full-length production, done partly outdoors, on 24 June 1982, in Montreal.
