Don Juan Comes Back from the War (Paperback)

Odon von Horvath's 1936 drama imagines the former voluptuary, older and emotionally scarred by his experience of the Great War, discovering unfamiliar thoughts of morality and responsibility that clash confusingly with his habitual licentiousness. His internal conflict is never resolved, but serves as an unforced metaphor for Germany's postwar identity crisis.Duncan Macmillan's new version streamlines the story and cuts several characters, but leaves the Don in a world made up entirely of women, so that in Andrea Ferran's production six actresses skilfully handle roles from nuns to prostitutes. While the driving force of Juan's adventure is a newly discovered guilt over abandoning one lover the night before their wedding, the most significant scene shows him given the opportunity for ordinary domesticity with another woman and blowing it.