In 1988, the original version of the play saw its world stage premiere in New York as
 You've Come Back,  translated by Jill MacDougall & directed by Françoise Kourilsky for UBU Repertory Theater as part of the First New York International Festival of the Arts.  This translation is available in Plays by Women: An International Anthology.

            In 1991, Jean-Pierre Vincent directed the play at Théâtre des Amandiers-Nanterre, but he insisted that the name be changed to Princesses  since the other title was too long, too sad, too confusing.

        The year 1993 saw two productions of Princesses: one directed by Solange Parat in Grenoble and the other in French and Uzbek, directed by Evgueni Voloboev, in Tachent, Uzbekistan.  In 1994, the play received a staged reading at the third IWPC in Adelaide and another in 1995, directed by Annie Castleline for the London International Festival of Theatre, with a new translation by Meredith Oakes.

         In the case of the main character in Gallaire's play, Lella, or Princess as she is called by her childhood friends and servants, arrives in her ancestral village with uncensored thoughts and unrestricted speech.  Free of the specter of her authoritarian father (now deceased), she is unaware of how dangerous she has become: a model of female liberation, the epitome of resistance to patriarchy and female submission.

        Only when her "parole empêchée" (unsanctioned speech) reaches the ears of the ignorant and hateful female elders entrusted to maintain the traditional way of life and commissioned to judge and punish Princess, does she realize the full extent of her alienation.

        In keeping with the dictates of classical tragedy and the real-life tyranny of blind oppression, Princess stands firm but powerless in the company of physically feeble allies (a drunken renegade, a legless cripple, and her 103-year-old nursemaid).  The power of revenge bequeathed from the grave of her father leaves her alone with Allah and her "parole empêchée."   In a horrific stylized dance, the black-garbed women commissioned to do the bidding of the male elders proceed to club Princess to her death.  When the men appear on stage for the first time in the final scene, it is to repossess the purified body of Princess prepared for burial.

        In a final ironic gesture of remorse, they flank her, immersed in prayer as they do their religious duty.  In spite of the daughter's eloquent self-defense, she remains a lonely voice in the desert, doomed to silence in a land studded with open graves, only to be heard by the hushed audience.  Although the shocking physical brutality of the play's denouement has understandably stirred controversy, Gallaire is adamant about representing a physical death, maintaining the hard reality for certain Muslim women.