RED

November 22-26, 2017

Teatro do Bairro, Lisboa

Simone, a merchant Daniel Cotterall

Bianca, his wife Allie Mazon

Guido Bardi, a prince of Florence Diogo Velez

Direction, set design and production Tania Kumeda and Suresh Nampuri

Sound Pedro Moura and Goncalo Romao |Video & Photo Helena Gokotta, Catarina Alma Takver

Production assistants Daniel Rooney and Nicole Hutcheson

Is all this mighty world
Narrowed into the confines of this room
With but three souls for poor inhabitants?

Wine merely is it? I have heard it said 

When wine is spilt blood is spilt also,

But that’s a foolish tale.

In Oscar Wilde’s theatrical fragment, A FLORENTINE TRAGEDY, Simone, a merchant who sells embroidered cloth to the nobility in 16th century Florence, returns home one evening to stumble upon the beginnings of an affair between his neglected wife, Bianca, and Guido, the callow prince of the realm. Frustrated by his dysfunctional marriage, made to witness his woman being snatched away in an act of moral thievery, disgusted by the entitlement of his social betters and by the fecklessness of this stranger who invites himself into another’s heart, a slow-burning rage is stirred in the bruised and embattled Simone. In a universe shrunk to a single room, the three people spin their scarlet-stained futures on the fatigued loom of destiny, until violence surges as the only possible path to redemption or damnation.