DEFINITELY THE BAHAMAS

Definitely the Bahamas is a play by English playwright Martin Crimp, written in 1986 for three actors from two distinct generations: the sixty-year-old couple played by Custodia Gallego and Marques d’Arede; and the student from Galicia, played by the young Galician actress Cristina Gayoso Rey. A retired couple, Tita and Gui, married for decades, speak to us in the living room of their home. The couple rents a room in their house to a young student, who occasionally crosses the stage to do little more than answer the phone, but whose presence challenges the very normalcy attempted to be created in the depiction of everyday life.

Originally written for radio, the play contains a strong ironic and darkly humorous tone, served by a dizzying and frenetic pace. The textual dynamics between the characters invite the viewer to enter this living room, where, close to the protagonists, they will perform detective work to fill the gaps left by the characters and understand that the lightness of the tone and apparent superficiality may hide something more worrying and serious. Although we are faced with a portrait of human morbidity and evil, sometimes realistic, sometimes caricatured, we know, both from what is said and what is left unsaid, that we cannot rest on the characters’ harmless appearance. Although written over 30 years ago, today we find a connection with the discourse centered on issues of migration and cultural clashes, resulting in an excessive and alarmist stance on the presence of the Other in our lives, but above all in our discourse and imagination.

The play now gains renewed meaning with the rise of nationalism, populism, and xenophobia. Despite being written during the period when the United Kingdom was a member state and an important pillar of the European Union, it is clear that the play is built on the same foundations of individualistic thinking about political sovereignty that led, for example, to Brexit, more than three decades after its premiere.