Thursday 21 – Saturday 23 April 2016

Caresses

By Sergi Belbel
Directed by Richard Beecham

One of the most popular Spanish playwrights to have emerged in the 1990’s, Sergei Belbel’s Caresses adopts a structure similar to that used by Arthur Schnitzler in his controversial 1896 play, La Ronde. Like the play that inspired it, Caresses encapsulates a range of carefully interwoven encounters between various complex personalities, each of whom is attempting to deal with the contradictions and fraught challenges of seemingly normal contemporary relationships. Unlike Schnitzler’s piece, not all such encounters are of a sexual nature, but in each case the emotional fragility, passion and sheer danger makes for a compelling and often blackly humorous social satire.

Sergei Belbel is a Catalan-Spanish playwright and the director of Teatre Nacional de Catalunya.

Cast

Young Man — Michael Priestley
Young Woman — Fay Jagger
Middle-Aged Woman — Amy Balmforth
Old Woman — Queenie Ingrams
Old Man — Daniel Allen
Boy — Bryony Miller
Man — Elliot Keefe
Girl — Hannah Duffy
Middle Aged Man — Daniel Harkin
Lad — Barney Healy-Smith
Woman — Caroline Gray

Designer: Simon Kenny