How cute is too cute?

That was a theme of lobby conversation on Thursday night after the first performance of Germinal at On the Boards. People like cuteness to a point, but is too much twee actually irresponsible? The after-show discussions took on an almost moral tone as people tried to parse the difference between genuine, volcanic joy (which, one person argued, does not deny the suffering and damage of the world but still finds hope and happiness) and the too-cuteness of whimsey (a secretly cynical—and often commodified—form of escapism). It was a lot of heavy talk for such a light show.

The consensus seemed to be that Defoort and Goerger (a four-person French company led by Antoine Defoort and Halory Goerger) landed just this side of too-cute in their charming and strangely moving Germinal, which charts the birth, development, and end of... something. Their 90-minute arc from blackout to blackout could be a parable about a human life, a relationship, a universe, or a single thought. Or perhaps Germinal isn't a parable at all, just a hyper-self-aware performance charting its own lifespan: blackout, light, sound and movement, back to blackout.

In any case, the journey of discovery begins in darkness. Or not-quite darkness, as bright lights are pointed at the audience members as they find their seats and settle down. After awhile, the lights slowly dim then suddenly brighten again mischievously, just as people think the show is about to begin. This happens a couple of times, sending ripples of surprised laughter through the room. In Germinal's first few seconds, Defoort and Goerger are already playing with our expectations and attention.

Once the lights are fully dark, three men and one woman sit on the stage and seem to be fiddling with light boards—the effects start with subtle shimmers (a dim spotlight here, another one there) building to flashes that light up the stage in blocks and swirls of color.

Step one: Let there be light.

The performers then begin their evolution from sitting to moving to having consciousness—their thoughts are projected in supertitles on an upstage wall. "Who's you?" one of the performers asks when he can't figure out whose thought has just appeared. "This raises a few questions about identity..."

While the three men lie upstage philosophizing, the woman (Ondine) realizes one of the floor tiles is amplified, her steps booming as she walks over it. So she finds a pickaxe and tears a hole in the stage, reaching through the rubble until she finds the culprit—a live microphone hidden beneath the floor.

Benign surprises like this keep popping up—sometimes literally—as the four performers get to know themselves and their four-walled universe.

Twenty or so minutes into Germinal, they figure out how to use their voices. One character vocalizes into the microphone Ondine found while the others encourage him to "modulate," raising and dropping his larynx, opening and closing his glottis, playing with his lips and tongue until he learns to speak—in French, keeping the English supertitles. (They agree that they like the syntax of English but that spoken French sounds nicer with its livelier diphthongs.)

Once they can all speak, they get to work classifying their universe. The first category is things that go "poc poc" when hit with a microphone (the floor, cables, the light boards) and things that do not go "poc poc" (light itself, "the joy of being together," the abstract category "poc poc"). One them proposes categorizing things that go "poc poc" in the heart, but not when hit with a microphone (such as la catharsis). The earnest, sweet way they negotiate discovery of their new world is like watching kittens exploring a living room—they can be a little destructive at times (as when their curiosity drives them to tear up portions of the floor), but they don't have a trace of nihilism or meanness.

The four performers have distinct personalities (some are goofier and some are more rational, some are more sensitive and some are more oblivious) and little tensions between them, but they never abandon their kitten-like nature. That's what keeps Germinal adorable.

But they also resemble differently inflected incarnations of Prospero in The Tempest—like the sorcerer in Shakespeare's last play, stuck on a strange island, the four characters of Germinal both discover and conjure up their stage-sized universe. They find things (like the treats under the floor) but also decide what their world is going to look like. At one point, they call some hotline on a headset for consultation. The comically matter-of-fact operator strongly recommends they get the "laws of physics starter pack" plus the four laws of thermodynamics. They decide to pass on her up-sell of deism—which, she says, could help them with metaphysical problems—saying they'd prefer "ontological minimalism" to preserve their "autonomy."

When she asks how they'd like to pay for their starter pack, they realize they don't really want the hassle of money and debt and inequality, so they hang up.

Eventually, they realize they've created the strangest and most wondrous things in their universe—the things that don't go "poc poc"—on their own and elaborate their list: "the joy of being together," questions of identity, unease, dialectics of conflict and resolution, awkwardness, a spirit of celebration, and the eventual realization that they and their universe are finite. Their cuteness, unlike the escapism of whimsey, does not deny death.

Critic Virginia Vaughan once described a film adaptation of The Tempest as "light as a soufflé, but... substantial enough for the main course." The same could be said of Germinal. It drifts on sweetness, light, and up-currents of earnest niceness, but is also aware of the infinite ballast of endings. Germinal begins in darkness and ends in darkness—and darkness doesn't go "poc poc."

Below is a video of Defoort and Goerger and the OtB crew building the set with its false floor—but if you're sensitive about spoilers, you might want to wait until after you see the show to watch the video.