17th and 18th December 9.30pm
Teatro do Bolhão
Het Zuidelijk Toneel (Holanda)
India Song
by Marguerite Duras
Set and lighting design Jan Versweyveld
Costumes Dries van Noten
Original music composed and performed by Harry de Wit
Dramaturgy Bart van den Eynde
Co-production Het Zuidelijk Toneel and Holland Festival
Performed in English, with Portuguese subtitles.
Approximate length: 1 hr 15min (no interval)
India Song has the charm of a musical score. Ivo
van Hove, one of the most important European directors, accepted the challenge of the
distant voices of Duras on stage in giving the main role to the soundtrack masterfully
conceived by Harry de Wit. Voices tell the story of the ambassador's wife, together with
street noise, shouts, whispers, musical extracts, reconstructing the fragments of memories
lived by the characters in the story. This is a production not to be missed, an essay on
the differences between 'reality' and reality as it is told.
Under a huge fan, in a daze, Anne-Marie
Streter, the ambassador's wife, dances with the ataché, with her secret love, with the
vice-consul, with her husband, with the 'lovers of the Ganges',… She is certainly
seductive and mysterious, but there is a monopoly which makes her the object of enormous
centrifugal forces fed by the tropical heat and which bring on the tragedy..
Het Zuidelijk Toneel