Putting in a bid for the oddest show of the year is the Gate with a play that casts something before swine, although whether or not it's pearls I'm still not altogether sure. Going by the punchy (
by recent standards) title of
I'd Rather Goya Robbed Me Of My Sleep Than Some Other Arsehole, Rodrigo Garcia's play, translated here by William Gregory, is a surreal nocturnal ride through Madrid. The title is a bit of a mantra for a man, played by Steffan Rhodri, driven to distraction by insomnia. Rather than be kept awake by the financial and social worries of modern life as he is now, he decides to spend his savings on a wild night culminating in a trip to see Goya's Black Paintings, housed in a museum two blocks away. When he proposes this to his sons though they'd rather go to Disneyland Paris, although for an 11-year-old and a 6-year-old their reasons for wanting to go are rather existential. Not that that's all that's unusual about them.
