Georges, Nathalie Doummar's most personal play, opens with Manuel Tadros

Nathalie Doummar has written and is performing in Georges, her most personal work to date—a family drama that continues her exploration of intimate household stories following her earlier plays Mama and Frères.

The production centers on a Quebec middle-class home furnished in 1970s and 1980s style, anchored by a La-Z-Boy armchair. While the setting is the Doummar family home, Doummar makes the case that this story belongs to any family—Tremblay, Boucher, or anyone else's.

Manuel Tadros, described as a complete artist with incredible verve, plays Georges, the father character. Tadros will alternate in the title role with Antoine Yared. All the actors in Georges performed in Frères, which was presented spring 2026 at Duceppe. Doummar performs the daughter, a role she wrote for herself in realistic style; Neil Elias plays her brother in a more discrete role. Director Rose-Anne Déry breaks the fourth wall throughout, with actors addressing the audience directly as though delivering Christmas wishes, songs, or even a dadaist poem about mucous membranes.

The play unfolds through scenes spanning years, marked by two Christmas celebrations that signify the passage of time. Georges, a man with Egyptian origins and conservative ideas, faces life alone after an unwanted separation. His children hold liberal values. The mother works outside the home with a salary higher than Georges's—he awaits permanence at Hydro-Québec—but eventually leaves him. His suffering is never shown on stage; instead, the production relies heavily on humour.

The critic found the opening scenes slow, fearing they might signal the entire production's pacing. But Doummar's skill with family stories without obvious drama justifies the patience. Tadros's performance is described as flawless, at times feeling like a solo act with cymbal cues for his rapid-fire gags. Yet the play itself is tender and sweet—the kind of work, the critic writes, that one would choose after an exhausting autumn, to be reminded that "ça va bien aller" and that family, always, is somewhere.