A woman walks across the stage, painfully slow. Her skin is a stark, pale white that is characteristic of ghosts. The sound of her footsteps echoes throughout the theater, creating an ominous allusion that she is walking to her death. But she instead ends up at a dinner table, along with an innocent young woman, a sullen old man, a salacious boy, and a conflicted gentleman. The old man wields a gun, using it to shoot the indecent boy that sits across from him at the table, his young counterpart. And this is the image that sets up Quartett: a man close to the end of his life killing the boy of his past. It epitomizes the words that I think describe this production best: beautiful and haunting. Quartett was something so out of my comfort zone, unlike anything I had ever watched before, and yet I would have so regretted not seeing it. Don't get me wrong, I've attended plays, but I've never seen something on this level before. It really exemplified what we've spoken about in class: that the words do not necessarily define the play on their own. The actors were speaking in French, a language I don't understand, but that didn't make the images that I saw any less powerful. The eerie background music still sent chills down my spine, anything the two lovers said sounded like poetry, despite the language barrier, and the startling appearance of the actors' makeup made me instantly mistrustful without yet hearing dialogue to substantiate my feelings. Indeed, the words said were just a small puzzle piece in this beautiful production. The only time I really noticed them was when phrases were restated. Most times, we fear being repetitive, but in the context of this performance, it made the words stronger and able to compete with the visual stimuli (colors, costumes, light, stage props, body language). Even still, I found it nearly impossible to tear my eyes away from the stage to read the subtitles. I can honestly say this was my favorite even thus far and that I would definitely go again if given the chance.