THE SUIT

At 86, Peter Brook is still on his mission to reinvent theatre.

- LAVANYA RAMANATHAN, THE WASHINGTON POST (07/04/2011)

The acclaimed opera and theatre director, Peter Brook, brings to the stage a new adaptation of the novel, The Suit, by the South African writer, Can Themba, about a love triangle in an apartheid ghetto. A young worker returns home to find his wife in bed with her lover. The lover escapes, leaving behind his suit. The only revenge the husband takes is to instruct his wife to treat the suit as an honoured guest. But how long can the wife endure this harsh imposition?

The story, an evocative cocktail of irony, humour and cruelty is a brilliant musical theatre production in which the masterly text is accompanied by live music from guitar, piano and trumpet.

In The Suit, Peter Brook once more strips the stage bare and gives flight to the audience's imagination, recreating the bare essentials of theatre that were recently described by The Guardian newspaper as "spare, deceptively simple, profound and magical, throwing open a trapdoor into a world where its audiences would never otherwise have tumbled". The paper concludes: "The results of (his) experiments changed theatre for ever and made Brook the father of fringe."

It is not the first time that Brook has tackled The Suit. Working with his Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, he produced a version in French under the corresponding title of Le Costume, a work which he toured round the world to rapturous applause and ovations. In this new production, he uses the original English language to revisit the text with a renewed vigour. The much anticipated premiere of The Suit took place in April last year at the Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord in Paris and, after its run at the Festival de Otoño en primavera, will continue its European tour at the Young Vic in London, Naples' Teatro Mercadante and the Théâtre Studio in Luxembourg.

www.bouffesdunord.com