Howie Lee and Rookie Lee, the two characters in Mark O’Rowe’s Sarna, namesakes "Lee-ness”, mutual mirrors of one another as the play’s original English title Howie the Rookie (1999) suggests, return in João Cardoso’s staging, after a number of successful previous presentations. The Portuguese title Sarna [Nuisance/Scabies] is an inspired choice, because besides referencing the metaphorical core of this play, which gave O’Rowe his breakthrough, it also suggests a contagion that spreads across its characters, gathering them together in a sort of fraternity or family. Indeed, O’Rowe’s plays are also about family, be it by blood or in the form of a gang, and its disintegration and violence. The monologues in Howie the Rookie give us two viewpoints on the same tragic and moving story, told in the author’s style, free from any conventions, just as contaminated by street jargon’s scatology and misogyny as by poetry, literature and cinema. Nobody speaks like O’Rowe’s characters: the muscular workings of his language are here laid bare by one skillful actor in a minimal set. We become the witnesses, confidants and trustees of Howie/Rookie’s memories in this sublime pocket-sized outsider epic. “Isto agora é até ao tutano.”