A make-believe world as gorgeous as a child's dream

The search for a place we truly belong is one that occupies us all – in Le Mans in France, Michael Hardingfound his

I REALLY WANT to belong somewhere; we all do. That’s why I was toying with the idea of finding a place to rent last week in Le Mans in France; in the old quarter of town, high on a hill, where the streets are narrow and the buildings date from 1600. I saw a sign – à louer – and a phone number, on the window of an ancient house. Inside, wooden beams held up the ceilings, the floors were as rippled as a small pond and the sun was shining on the cobbled street outside.

All I had to do was take out my iPhone and call. But I decided against it. Sometimes I think I just don’t belong anywhere.

I sat in the 14th-century cathedral of Saint-Julien, where two pigeons flew in the sunlight above me trying to escape from the vault. In the cool shadows below, a warden in a white shirt and black tie watched me so attentively that I got paranoid, and felt I certainly don’t belong in a church anymore.

I went to the town square, the Place de la République, and sat listening to the wheels of the trams and voices around me, in courtship, argument, scolding children or just gossiping about the price of blouses; a blazing world of elegance, flowing pantaloons, tan skin in silk dresses, and not a pot belly in sight. Every man was the perfect weight, so I couldn’t say I belonged there either.

On a balcony at the side of the square, the local down-and-outs were having their morning conference. Some of them wore sunglasses, and one fellow drank from a champagne bottle. I wondered were they extras in a movie about down-and-outs, or the real thing. They certainly seemed more assured than their bewildered Irish colleagues around Marlborough Street.

I walked as far as la Fonderie, a building at the centre of town – living quarters for the actors of Théâtre du Radeau. It’s been four years since I spent a summer with them, but the code on the door hadn’t changed. Inside, the reception area hadn’t changed either. The coffee-maker was where it always was. The cello in the diningroom was perched in the corner, as expected. And then, across the floorboards a petite woman with long black hair floated towards me, kissed me and said she was enchanted to see me again; Laurence Cable is the leading actor with the company.

“But we must go to the tent,” she whispered. “The others are already there.” She threw me the keys of an old Citroën. “You drive,” she commanded. “I will trust you.”

A black industrial tent stands in a field outside town, surrounded by woods. It’s the size of a small factory, and the players use it for rehearsals. Inside it is hot and dark and only the playing area for the actors is lit; a labyrinth of moving curtains, haunting light, and empty space.

The company was at a table, drinking water and smoking. Boris, a big boyish man with a ferocious intellect, grasped my hands. Fosco, a gaunt young Italian, bowed with the quietness of a monk. Murielle, Claudie, and Karine, dancers, offered their cheeks to be kissed. Francois Tanguy, the director, a shy genius who lives in a caravan beside the tent, doesn’t do much talking. He was wearing the same green shirt he had been wearing on my previous visit. I offered him flowers; we embraced.

Just greeting them all drained me emotionally so I sat on a sofa in the dark, while the players put on frocks and gowns of an earlier century and moved like ghosts about the playing area.

I dozed, listening occasionally to an actor, as he stood with a lamp in his hand gazing into the darkness, asking the same question over and over again: Who goes there? Each time I opened my eyes there was a new image on stage: a man with a tall hat, keeping vigil by candlelight; a queen falling from a great height or some other melancholic figure framed in ghostly light.

Théâtre du Radeau’s work is exquisitely sensual and visual, and an enormous intensity builds up in the tent as they quarry the darkness in search of beauty.

The actors move about in a make-believe world as gorgeous as a child’s dream and as I dozed on the sofa, I realised that, for me, theatre has always been a refuge from stress, a raft I cling to in stormy weather and, like the long ago cradle, where I was once safe, theatre is a place I know I belong.