MAY WE BE FORGIVEN

About the show

The adaptation of this great American novel is Guy Cassiers’s third direction of a coproduction by Toneelgroep Amsterdam and Toneelhuis Antwerp. Cassiers directs a quality cast of actors from both companies. The American writer A.M. Homes (1961) was born under difficult circumstances. Her mother was a young single woman who had an affair with her boss, who was much older. Homes ended up being adopted. She didn’t meet her birth parents until she was 31 years old. It is therefore not surprising that the importance of family – and the absence of it – is often the object of research in her books. May we be forgiven is a poignant portrait of a society that undermines its own values: all its cornerstones – family, relatives, friendship, … – are under pressure and are in need of being redefined. The weaknesses of all characters are presented at pace, like a soap-opera-on-speed with a large dose of absurdity.