2000-year-old comedy coming to the Edinburgh Festival Theatre

Things will change. Things always change. Two thousand years from now people will look back on us and maybe they’ll be appalled by what we said and did – or maybe they’ll laugh or maybe they’ll just wonder at the complexity of human relationships.

Arbery Productions is creating history this year, bringing new life to an outrageous 2,000-year-old comedy with a revival of Gaius Petronius’s classic Latin text The Satyricon.

Adapted by award-winning playwright Martin Foreman (London Solo Festival New Writing 2012, Pitlochry Festival Theatre Short Play 2018) and co-directed with Argentinian actor Junior Cross, the production will premiere at The Studio in Edinburgh’s Festival Theatre on 4 November (preview 3 November).

The story of The  Satyricon follows three young men footloose in the Roman Empire. With narrator Gaius Petronius as their guide, and a group of cantankerous Actors taking on all other roles as needed, Encolpius, Ascyltos and Giton find themselves at the heart of adventures of seduction, deception, love, thievery, violence and more.

A comedy of words and action that steps back into the past while keeping one foot in the present. A picaresque tale that is funny and thought-provoking, uncomfortable and tragic, satiric and satyric. Sexual relations viewed from the Roman perspective – and the Roman perspective viewed from today. A reminder that actors have a life beyond the stage – and that some lives never end.

All this and more in the fast and funny, filthy and philosophical drama that is The Satyricon.

Due to the ongoing global health crisis dates may be subject to change.