Na República da Felicidade

Thanks to Teatro da Rainha, we have enjoyed regular contact with the oeuvre of one of the greatest contemporary playwrights. From Fewer Emergencies to Definitely the Bahamas , from Face to the Wall to The Rest Will Be Familiar to You from Cinema , many were the chances given us to experience on stage Martin Crimp’s cruel, dilemmatic, amusing, wordy and musical theatre. Divided into three parts or stations, a structure evocative of the Hell, Purgatory and Heaven sections in Dante’s Divine Comedy , Na República da Felicidade [ In the Republic of Happiness ] (2012) is one of Crimp’s angriest plays. It is useless to look through it in search of a consoling vision of happiness and democracy, the two concepts its title evokes. At its centre, we find the ruins of the archaeological monument we call family. Crimp tells us of its destruction, denouncing the lovelessness, degradation of affective relationships, venality, competition, envy, jealousy and egotistic greed that ruin any possibility of collective happiness.