The last time that tg STAN graced the stages of the Festival de Otoño was in 2014, with its experimental version of Harold Pinter’s Betrayal. It was also here in 2012 and 2008. It seems fitting that the Belgian company is back for our fortieth edition, and with a double entry. We’ll talk about Infidèles here, based on a text by Ingmar Bergman.

Film-maker and writer whose texts De Keersmaeker and company have worked with in the past (staging After the Rehearsal in 2016, and Scenes from a Marriage in 2013). And this time Robby Cleiren joins them as actor and co-producer, from the fellow-Belgian company Roovers. Together they’ve explored this subtle autobiographical facet of the original, but not with psychological pursuits, but instead to see how human relationships are mercilessly dissected from the inside also, including his. They’ve sought an uninhibited theatrical reading in which there’s room for vitality and humour, despite the harshness of the dialogues, with the aim of paying homage without affectations or idolatry, but with respect and admiration, to the creator of gems like Persona, The Seventh Seal and Wild Strawberries.

The old Bergman calls Marianne and asks her to confess her infidelity. In the film, Marianne monopolised the conversation, rambling on and on. For this stage adaptation, the lines are expanded, fed by other texts and script elements, are rearranged and taken on by four actors, with the aim of balancing the dialogue and giving Bergman’s voice more space. The other texts are from The Magic Lantern, the film-maker’s autobiography, a book that spoke of his life and the artists he met over the course of his life with no self-indulgence. As well as his failures and how Bach was a constant inspiration to him. He recounts that, upon returning from a long trip, he found out that his wife and two of his children had died, and shouted to the heavens: ‘God, may my joy not leave me!’ Bergman confesses that he always pursued this same joy and this performance plays out like a musical composition of voices that explore multiple variations surrounding the central theme, which is none other than Ingmar Bergman himself.