A summer house by a lake in Connecticut, a quiet afternoon – two sisters and their husbands are having a barbecue when, suddenly, the former owners of the house show up at the door. A seemingly insignificant encounter in Old Saybrook brings these three couples face-to-face with long-buried secrets and emotional questions they've been avoiding for years.

Starting from a simple situation, American screenwriter and director Woody Allen, in his one-act play Old Saybrook, explores themes of fidelity and desire, marital crisis, and infidelity. In a style reminiscent of Chekhov, but with Allen’s signature sharp dialogue, unexpected twists, and dry humor, delicate love relationships are exposed, raising questions about forgiveness and new beginnings. If the theory holds that every writer tells the same story throughout their life, then Woody Allen’s story is a comedy about existential and emotional crises, sexual temptation, and the chaos of romantic relationships. Though these themes are often explored through a specific social lens – the New York intellectual middle class – Allen’s ability to dissect human relationships makes his characters and their struggles universal and widely relatable.

In our staging of Old Saybrook, the connection to the local context is subtly emphasized through the motif of the lake by which the characters are vacationing.

This production of Old Saybrook, part of the international PROSPER project and inspired by the artist residency held in Ohrid, raises important questions about the individual's relationship with nature.
 

The two elegant New York couples may appear perfect and harmonious, but beneath that surface lies a web of repressed secrets, flaws, and frustrations.
Much like Allen’s characters, the lake in this performance seems, at first glance, to represent peace and untouched natural beauty. Yet in reality, it has been devastated by human interference—polluted and exploited in the name of mass tourism and profit.

Tamara Barackov