A Lovers’ Chorus

A couple wake 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. What follows are agonising moments: the woman receiving treatment in critical condition, the man in the waiting room, tortured by uncertainty. Eventually life goes on, but what happened irrevocably changes the course of the lovers’ life together.

A Lovers’ Chorus captivates from its very first lines. Written and directed by Portuguese artist Tiago Rodrigues, the work takes the audience to the heart of a relationship between two people. It is a choral play, a lyrical story: the couple describe the situation in two voices, as one of them comes close to death. The two versions, told in parallel, differ slightly. Their lives and memories intertwine in two monologues that at times become a dialogue, come together, and then part again.

A Lovers’ Chorus celebrates love, vitality and the extraordinarily strong bond between two people in a situation where life hangs by a thread. The work will be seen in Espoo, directed by Tiago Rodrigues himself. Jussi Sorjanen, artistic director of &, is assistant director. Alma Pöysti and Elmer Bäck dazzle on stage. A Lovers’ Chorus by & is the fourth time Rodrigues has directed this work, originally titled Coro Dos Amantes. First created in Portugal in 2007, the work has since had its own-language versions in France (Théâtre des Bouffes du Nord, 2021), Greece (Onassis Stegi, 2024) and in Catalan in Spain (Teatre Lliure 2025).