American playwright David Hirson’s rollicking 1991 play, La Bete, is a comic tour de force about Elomire, a high-minded classical dramatist who loves only the theatre, and Valere, a low-brow street clown who loves only himself. When the fickle princess decides she’s grown weary of Elomire’s royal theatre troupe, he and Valere are left fighting for survival as art squares off with ego in a literary showdown for the ages.