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From the jury
“That both generations connect so effortlessly surely has to do with their shared love for text-based theatre and the universal themes addressed. This is ensemble acting at its best!”

In Revolutionary Road, we are introduced to April and Frank Wheeler, as well as several of their friends and colleagues. April and Frank are a beautiful couple. Life smiles on them: a house, a garden, children, jobs… and love, so much love. They have it all. They dare to dream big and are determined to live life to the fullest. To avoid sinking into a narrow, bourgeois existence in a society where conformity has become the highest good, they come up with a radical plan: to leave everything behind and move to Paris to start anew. But reality catches up with them, and their dream is crushed. Frustrated by their shattered dream, they turn against each other, and their love turns into a nightmare.

After our exploration of Ingmar Bergman’s work with Infidèles, the 2018 performance by STAN and De Roovers, we continue to delve into the realm of human failure with Revolutionary Road by Richard Yates. The novel embodies the quest for freedom and selfless love, and the immense strength and courage required to radically change one’s life. In the stage adaptation, these underlying themes will become even more pronounced. More than in Infidèles, this story not only explores relational dynamics but also has a strong social and political dimension, making it a relentless critique of the suffocating and mind-numbing nature of societal expectations. It reveals how difficult it is to escape them.

Though set in 1950s America, the story builds a clear bridge to today’s Western society. Think of the standardization of thought, the neo-liberal revolution, the “just act normal” culture in a country like the Netherlands, or the persistent fear and aversion toward “the other” in our own country. Revolutionary Road is a story about the deceit of domestic bliss, about the seeming harmony behind which a world of despair hides, about love that turns into resentment out of helplessness, about what we think and what we say, about who we want to be and who we really are, about wanting to escape everything but being unable to escape ourselves, about wanting to spark a revolution but getting lost in your own head.

Two young actors, Ivana Noa (Master’s student at the Antwerp Conservatory) and Flor Van Severen (Wolf Wolf, Camping Sunset), take on the roles of April and Frank Wheeler. Jolente De Keersmaeker and Robby Cleiren play all other roles. Two generations of actors with a great love for text aim to create a huis clos in which they confront each other with Richard Yates’ razor-sharp dialogue. Something between Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf and a string quartet by Dmitri Shostakovich.

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