Two playwrights re-tell history through a different lens. One imagines the preoccupations of the dictator in his hours of insomnia. The other sees a real event from the point of view of its unacknowledged heroine.
In A Reputation we are in Lisbon, 1966. The ageing dictator Antonio Oliveira Salazar has governed this small European country with an iron hand for nearly 40 years. A devout and intensely private man, he contemplates his legacy of a secure and solvent nation with pride. But time passes, and there is the different matter of how history will treat him – of his reputation. And today he has a visitor, the one person he can trust. A Reputation is written by Susannah Finzi and translated into Portuguese (for the Lisbon production in 2024) by Armando Nascimento Rosa. Directed by Almiro Andrade.
Departure–The Woman Without Fear tells the real-life story of Humberto Delgado, diplomat and politician, and leader of an ill-fated attempt to overthrow the Portuguese dictator Salazar. The story is told through the eyes of Arajaryr Campos, his secretary and lover. Leaving her small daughter behind in Brazil, Arajaryr was assassinated together with Delgado in 1965 in Villanueva del Fresno, Spain by the secret police of Prime Minister Salazar. Departure is written by Armando Nascimento Rosa and translated into English by Susannah Finzi. Directed by Mariana Aristizábal Pardo.
PLEASE NOTE: Departure will be performed script in hand as a rehearsed reading.
Certain performances are followed by a fado concert by Armando Nascimento Rosa or a panel discussion with both writers.
Show Schedule
2 JUL A Reputation
4 JUL A Reputation + Panel Discussion
5 & 6 JUL – Double bill + Fado Evening
7 JUL- Departure + Panel Discussion
All other dates double bills.
Post show panel sessions:
What’s translating for the stage really like? What’s different about it? Armando Nascimento Rosa and Susannah Finzi have worked together for more than ten years and in the case of A Reputation and Departure – The Woman without Fear, have translated each other’s work for performances this year in London and Lisbon. Join them both for a discussion on how this has worked out.
Thursday 4th July. Free to ticket holders.
Join us for a post-show panel discussion with both the writers. A Reputation and Departure–The Woman without Fear are both set in 1960s Portugal during the dictatorship of Antonio Oliveira Salazar. Why did these two writers choose to write about this era in Portugal’s history? Join Armando Nascimento Rosa and Susannah Finzi for a discussion on “why these plays now?”
Sunday 7th July. Free to ticket holders.
Post show fado:
Armando Nascimento Rosa’s first solo concert outside Portugal as a fado singer was in Greece, at Athens’ Cabaret Voltaire, in 2017. As singer/composer, he published the CDO Piano em Pessoa(2018) and the original show premiered in Barcelona and toured in Portugal and Brazil. A double CDO Fado é estranha alegria with 40 originalsongs was released in 2019,with themes of bossa nova, fado/blues, tango, and even a swinging jazz number with the song ‘A goddess within’ from his play The Real Mother of Marilyn Monroe.
Friday 5th and Saturday 6th July. Free to ticket holders.
Street Art Exhibition in Omnibus Café / Bar:
In a spontaneous burst of celebration, long suppressed protest and bids for attention among the emerging political parties, the months and years that followed the Portuguese revolution saw a fabulous flowering of Street Art on the walls of cities and small towns throughout the country. Writer and translator Susannah Finzi was living in Portugal when the revolution took place on 25th April 1974 and she and journalist Michael Noelke recorded a number of these (most of the originals have long since disappeared). The resulting digital file was donated to the Museu Aljube (Resistance and Revolution) in Lisbon in 2016. Never seen before in the UK, these images will be projected in Omnibus’s café bar in an exhibition.
From 1st-14th July. Free entry.
