Mark Brown: Portugal's Festival de Almada offers warning from history

The National

20-07-2025

As the anticipation grows, it can be easy to forget that, elsewhere, the summer festival season is already in full swing.
Here in Portugal, theatre lovers descend every July on the city of Almada. Sitting under the huge statue of Cristo Rei (Christ the King), this former industrial town boasts, in Festival de Almada, Portugal's leading showcase of international and Portuguese theatre.
Over the last 17 years, I have had the great privilege of attending most editions of this remarkable festival which is staged mainly in Almada, but also in venues across the River Tagus in the Portuguese capital, Lisbon. Created in 1984 by the late, visionary theatre director Joaquim Benite, the festival has been guided expertly (since Benite's death in 2012) by his chosen successor, Rodrigo Francisco.
The festival manages to be simultaneously impressive (both in its scale and in the quality of the artists it presents), yet also unpretentious and welcoming (to local and visiting guests alike). One of its excellent, democratic traditions is that the audience votes for its favourite production of the programme, which, in turn, is invited to return to the festival the following year.
I will not be surprised if the audience's choice from the 2025 showcase (which came to a close on Friday) is A Colónia (The Colony) by the innovative Portuguese theatremaker Marco Martins. Although this year's programme included esteemed work from France, Italy, Spain and Germany, this homegrown production (which was first performed last year, for the 50th anniversary of the Portuguese Revolution) has a number of features that set it apart.
The piece, which is based upon an investigation by journalist Joana Pereira Bastos, draws on the testimonies of anti-fascist resistance fighters (mainly members of Portuguese Communist Party) who were imprisoned and tortured under the fascist dictatorship of António de Oliveira Salazar and his successor Marcello Caetano. It draws strongly, too, on the accounts of children of political prisoners who received some respite from their trauma and isolation at a children's summer camp known as The Colony.
The fascist Estado Novo (New State) tyrannised over the Portuguese people from 1933 until it was overthrown by the Revolution of April 25, 1974. Martins's production – which was presented as part of Festival de Almada in the beautifully appointed theatre of Culturgest in the centre of Lisbon – combines testimony by survivors of the regime with scenes played by both professional actors and teenage theatre performers.
The show opens with testimony by a very elderly couple – Conceição Matos and Domingos Abrantes – who survived lengthy periods of incarceration and unspeakable torture at the hands of the regime's reviled secret police, the PIDE. It includes, too, the accounts of people who attended The Colony in 1972 and '73, such as Manuela Canais Rocha and Humberto Candeias.
Added to these firsthand testimonies are dramatised scenes based upon diaries and historical research. We hear the memories of children whose young lives were spent in such isolation and secrecy that they had no encounters with other kids.
There are also harrowing accounts of torture and inspiring memories of prisoners' loved ones building bonfires on the beach outside the Paniche Prison so that the incarcerated resistance fighters could see that their families were there. Brought together with an often stirring and atmospheric score of live and recorded music and moments in which the young performers reflect on what the word 'freedom' means to them, Martins's work – which combines documentary theatre, verbatim theatre, dramatised memoir and devised performance – packs a powerful punch, in both political and emotional terms.
In aesthetic terms, it isn't perfect by any means. At two hours and 15 minutes, it is too long by about half an hour. A lack of momentum and dramaturgical rigour means the piece doesn't always sustain the power of its subject as it should.
THE young performers' early statements about personal and political liberty are the closest the production comes to an expression of any real kind of agency on the part of the kids themselves: for the most part, the youngsters are present on-stage, but without very much meaningful to do or say.
These shortcomings aside, however, this ambitious theatre work stands as a memorable and emotive testament to the courage of those who resisted the fascist regime in Portugal. It stands, too, as a stark warning in a world where far-right forces (including the pernicious Chega in Portugal and the equally obnoxious Reform UK in the nations of the British state) are on the rise.
Interestingly, a few nights earlier in the festival, the Nome Próprio company of Porto presented a dance work that also speaks to the very real threat to Portugal's democratic freedoms. Played in the outdoor theatre of the Escola D. António da Costa in Almada, the piece – which was created by choreographer Victor Hugo Pontes, and the title of which translates as Something Is About To Happen – is performed by a company of dancers who are entirely naked throughout.
The work ranges from sections that seem to evoke the primordial and animal origins of humanity, to images of dystopia, and on to reflections on humanity's capacities for carnality and physical affection. The company is strong and boasts some really exceptional dancers.
However, the choreography is frustratingly varied, in quality as well as style. Although the piece is only 70 minutes long, it has at least two false endings.
Its ultimate conclusion – in which the entire company of dancers sings Queen's soft rock anthem I Want To Break Free – is neither subtle nor particularly affecting. Nevertheless, in the times in which we live, one finds oneself greatly encouraged to see such a bold expression of artistic and physical freedom.
The Festival's extensive international programme included Marius by Compagnie Louis Brouillard from Paris. The play is adapted from Marcel Pagnol's 1929 drama, in which the titular Marius, who works in his father's café in Marseille, is torn between his love for his childhood friend Fanny and his desire to sail the seven seas.
Relocated to the present day, director-adapter Joël Pommerat's production combines professional actors with former convicts he encountered while conducting theatre in prison projects. The outcome is a play that introduces elements of organised crime –
and a degree of menace and foreboding – that distinguish the adaptation both from Pagnol's romantic stage drama and Alexander Korda's 1931 film version.
Another international highlight was Teatro Delusio by acclaimed German mask theatre company Familie Flöz. Many Edinburgh Fringe-goers will have fond memories of the Berlin-based company, whose work is characterised by brilliant, hyper-real masks and wonderfully expressive physical performance.
Teatro Delusio is a beautifully conceived drama set backstage in a theatre. Three astonishing performers play an extraordinary panoply of characters, ranging from a lovelorn stage manager to the gloriously self-regarding leading lady of an opera company. As ever with Familie Flöz, the piece overflows with theatrical ingenuity, slapstick humour and genuine pathos.
Festival de Almada may be celebrating its 42nd edition, but it is still as fresh and vibrant as it was in 1984 when Joaquim Benite staged his first programme.