The Bond of Interests

Odyssey Theatre presents the world premiere of a new adaptatation and translation of “The Bond of Interests” by Spanish playwright and Nobel laureate Jacinto Benavente.

The Bonds of Interest is a comic intrigue about two con artists who swindle an entire town of crooked merchants, powerful elites and grasping pretenders, all of whom will stop at nothing to get rich quick. This satire takes aim at the corruption and insatiable greed flourishing in a modern money-driven world.

Award-winning director Laurie Steven returns to direct a talented cast of Odyssey veterans and newcomers from Ottawa, Toronto and the U.K. Leading the cast as Crispín, the master manipulator, is Canadian-British actor and Odyssey veteran Ross Mullan, best known as The White Walker on Game of Thrones. Also joining the cast is Toronto theatre and film actor Soo Garay, most recently seen on HBO’s The Handmaid’s Tale and on the Netflix series The Umbrella Academy.

Inspired by graphic novels and hip-hop jazz funk music, the production’s design team, including eminent local architect Barry Padolsky, award-winning costume designer Vanessa Imeson, and composer and founder of Ottawa’s Lachance Music School Venessa Lachance, creates a world of decadent glamour and decaying wealth inhabited by comic masked crooks and charlatans.

Imbued with stage smarts and an artistic sense of space, and powered by a dynamic gang of skilled performers, it is bright, boisterous summer theatre.

—Ottawa Citizen

About Odyssey Theatre

Odyssey’s stage is on the banks of the Rideau River in Strathcona Park. Odyssey’s Theatre Under the Stars series, renowned for its signature performances featuring Commedia dell’Arte, mask, physical theatre, clown and puppetry, has received over 25 awards and nominations, and was most recently included in the Ottawa Citizen’s Top 10 Live Performances of 2018.

About Jacinto Benavente

Benavente (1866-1954) was the son of a well-known Madrid pediatrician. He started to study law at university but came into an inheritance when his father died; he quit his studies and travelled around Europe. Benavente lived through a tumultuous period of Spanish history: the Spanish-American war, the two World Wars and the Spanish Civil War. As a playwright he was prolific and wrote over 150 plays, from comedy and satire to drama and tragedy. He also wrote poems, letters and other prose.

Some of his more important works areThe Governor’s Wife (1901), a comedy in three acts; The Unloved Woman (1913), a rural tragedy tackling the theme of incest and that was turned into a movie in 1921 with Norma Talmadge; The Lady of the House (1908), a psychological drama.

The Bonds of Interest (1907) is based on the Commedia Dell’arte; it is thought to be his masterpiece and likely garnered him the Nobel prize.