Damned by Despair

Synopsis

Obsessed with his own salvation, the hermit Paulo dedicates himself to ten years of prayerful penance. When his faith wavers, the ever-watchful Devil seizes the moment to convince him that he shares the fate of one Enrico, a notorious Neapolitan gangster destined for damnation. Swearing vengeance, Paulo lashes out against God and assembles a band of rival outlaws. "I'll match Enrico in mad badness. So, we're damned, both of us, are we? Then I'll be revenged on the whole world." And yet, even as their villainous crimes escalate, the possibility of redemption hovers over the two men, perhaps within reach. This fast-paced adventure story embraces bandits and beautiful women between glimpses of heaven and hell. The subversive and at times riotous exploration of faith and the transformative power of love races across the Italian landscape, relishing the unpredictability of fate, an extraordinary array of characters and their very real dilemmas.

Our Review:

Michael Coveney - 11 October 2012

How real are heaven and hell in your lives? When a Neapolitan bandit is hanged for his crimes, he soars into the bright lights of the Olivier, like a transfigured angel. His counterpart, a grumpy old hermit whose sin of pride has led him into temptation, dies in misery and doubt, plummeting down a mountainside into hell.

These fateful contradictions lie at the heart of Tirso de Molina's 17th century piece of theological grand guignol, a brutal, poetic slab of a Golden Age Spanish play that has been appropriated with relish by Frank McGuinness (using a literal translation by Simon Breden, or Bredon; the NT programme and Faber text are in disagreement) as an ironic commentary on the pitfalls of religious belief.

It makes for an awkward, demanding, sometimes bathetic night in the Olivier, but there is no question that this latest in the Travelex Tickets season is an overdue follow-up to the Gate...

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Latest User Review

Tim Saunders - 7 November 2012:

It is a brave production of a play that brings heaven and hell to modern secular audiences. But the power is dispersed by the vast spaces of the National, some miscasting, especially of Bertie Carvel as Enrico and his father, and a translatiopn which appears to be from a 50 year old trying to be oool. The play either needed to be done in period or rewritten in gangster. A shame because there were powerful moments - the hermits agonies over his soul destined for Hell and Enrico's end....

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