Lorenzaccio

The Teatro do Bolhão company is presently assembling an ambitious triptych: its central panel, preceded by António José da Silva’s Vida do Grande D. Quixote de La Mancha e do Gordo Sancho Pança and preceding Shakespeare’s The Merchant of Venice , is ** Lorenzaccio **, a play by **Alfred de Musset** (1834), staged by **Rogério de Carvalho**. Out of historical records from 16th-century Florentine describing the overthrow of tyrannical duke Alessandro de’ Medici, murdered by his cousin Lorenzo – insultingly nicknamed “Lorenzaccio” for frustrating the insurgents’ desire for change –, Musset creates what is as much a personal drama focused on the titular character, who is haunted by a Hamletian unease, as a critique of a decadent society. This milestone of French Romantic drama, seen as unperformable or otherwise staged in mutilated versions, has always been seen as a challenge by the company, which now premieres it in Portugal, borrowing inspiration from its formal liberty to corrupt its dramatic forms and genres. A show about a human community and its inability to confront the crumbling-down of power and its own ability to dissimulate, Lorenzaccio may also prove to be a portrait of our time.