He hadn‘t seen his family in twenty years, when the French sociologist Didier Eribon returned to Reims for the first time again after the death of his father. This is the starting point of an unsparing autobiographical research endeavor dealing with sexual and social shame; with the milieu of workers in which he was raised and from which he fled as a young homosexual; with the academic context to whose language and spirit he adapted and in which he concealed his social background; with his own family members who proudly voted for the left in the past, but have resigned and now vote for the Front National. His research questions the rise of right-wing populism and does not dispense with critique of a left, which has become habitually and politically alienated from the working class. Michael Rettig stages ›Return to Reims‹ as a polyphone dialogue between an actor and five musicians.