Chorus of Lovers

A couple wakes up at home in the middle of the night. “I can’t breathe,” the woman says. “She can’t breathe,” the man repeats. They hurry to the car and drive to the hospital. Agonising moments follow: the woman is in critical condition receiving treatment, while the man waits in the waiting room, tormented by uncertainty. Eventually life goes on, but what has happened inevitably changes the course of the lovers’ life together. Chorus of Lovers grips you from its very first lines. Written and directed by Portuguese playwright Tiago Rodrigues, the work takes the audience to the heart of the relationship between two people. It is a choral play, a lyrical story: speaking in two voices, the couple describe a situation in which one of them comes close to death. The two versions, told in parallel, differ slightly from each other. The lives and memories of two people intertwine in two monologues that sometimes become a dialogue, converge and then drift apart again. Chorus of Lovers celebrates love, vitality and the exceptionally strong bond between two people in a situation where the continuation of life hangs by a thread. The work will be seen in Espoo, directed by Tiago Rodrigues himself. Jussi Sorjanen, artistic director of &, is the assistant director. Alma Pöysti and Elmer Bäck shine on stage. Chorus of Lovers at & is the fourth time Rodrigues has directed this work, originally titled Coro Dos Amantes. First created in Portugal in 2007, the work has since been produced in its own language versions in France (Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, 2021), Greece (Onassis Stegi, 2024) and in Catalan in Spain (Teatre Lliure 2025).