Onder de vulkaan (Under the volcano)

“Come back to me, Yvonne. I’ll stop drinking. Just come back, even if it’s only for a day.”, So writes Geoffrey Firmin, British consul in Mexico, to the wife who has left him. But he doesn’t post the letter. On November 2, 1938, The Day of the Dead (All Souls Day), she walks into the cantina where he’s been drinking all night. What follows is a day spent fighting to save their relationship.

Malcolm Lowry based his novel Under the Volcano partly on his own life. No other book in the literary canon describes so ruthlessly, so poignantly, so poetically and with such fascination the world of the drunkard.

It is the end of the 1930s and the world is on the brink of chaos. Four people -- Geoffrey Firmin, the Consul, Yvonne Constable, his wife, Hugh Firmin, his younger brother, and Jacques Laruelle, boyhood friend of the Consul -- make a passionate attempt to give meaning to their lives.

For this production Guy Cassiers went filming in Mexico. Josse De Pauw adapted the novel as a play. He also portrays an impressive Consul.

"Under the Volcano is an act of courage. (*****)" Kester Freriks in NRC

DIRECTION GUY CASSIERS TEXT JOSSE DE PAUW BASED ON THE NOVEL BY MALCOLM LOWRY DRAMATURGY ERWIN JANS WITH KATELIJNE DAMEN, JOSSE DE PAUW, BERT LUPPES, MARC VAN EEGHEM STYLING|SET DESIGN ENRICO BAGNOLI, DIEDERIK DE COCK, ARJEN KLERKX COSTUME DESIGN KATELIJNE DAMEN ASSISTANT VIDEO EDITING FREDERIK JASSOGNE

PRODUCTION Toneelhuis

CO-PRODUCTION Théâtre de la Ville Paris (FR) / Festival d’Automne à Paris (FR), MC2 Grenoble (FR), Théâtre du Nord Lille (FR), Maison de la Culture d’Amiens (FR), Le Volcan Scéne Nationale du Havre (FR), La Comédie de Reims (FR)

DURATION 135 min