Grim play makes China debut

Seven children and a director are at the rehearsals - the young actors slip effortlessly into their different roles: a police officer, a victim, the parents of a dead girl and the murderer's father. The locations swap between the scene of a crime, a funeral ceremony or an everyday moment from the life of Victor Dutroux.

For those of a certain age, that surname might ring a bell, offering a clue as to the play's subject matter.

Five Easy Pieces, by Swiss theater director Milo Rau and his International Institute of Political Murder, is the grim tale of Belgian child murderer and pedophile, Marc Dutroux, controversially performed with children between the ages of 8 and 14 - and listed as one of the 10 "most remarkable productions" at renowned German-language theater festival, Theatertreffen, in 2017.