Arts Centre Vooruit, Ghent, Belgium

“The old scoundrel is back, get your tickets now!” De Morgen wrote about Decorte’s previous piece Wintervögelchen. With this adaptation of Shakespeare’s A Winter’s Tale he presented one of the best pieces of his entire career. Decorte now follows up this success with his own version of Euripides’s classic tragedy about the Maenads with Bakchai. In the child-like language that so defines him, Decorte rewrites the story of rivalry between Pentheus, King of Thebes, who puts ratio first, and Dionysus, god of wine and ecstasy, who only seeks to fulfil his own desires. In Decorte’s own words, Bakchai, starring Benny Claessens (Eisbär, Dood Paard, Het geslacht De Pauw) and Sara De Bosschere (De Roovers), will be “a new step in my quest for radical love, beauty and authenticity.”