The work of Danish author Peter Asmussen (1957-2016) encompasses theatre, opera, novels, film and TV. His play The Beach (1996) caught the attention of stage director João Reis: “The remarkable thing about this text is that, in spite of the impending disaster, there is still space to draw one last breath.” Two couples meet during the summer holidays in a deserted hotel in the Scandinavian coast, to which they return year after year. The doubts, the ghosts, the melancholic enthusiasm blur, at each comeback, the lines between conviviality, confession and confrontation. “Whoever seeks and returns to a place where nothing happens, is saying goodbye to or running away from something.” The show leads us through the turbulences and ambiguities of “this almost always off-key quartet”, through what is left unsaid, through the ever-unsatisfied need for consolation. “From this impossibility comes the text’s power, its interplay of approaches and avoidances”, João Reis tells us. “As if the characters were waiting for someone to rescue them and lead them to some other place, even one with just a semblance of harmony.”