Liola: NHB Classic Plays

A funny and touching new version of Pirandello's high-spirited drama, set at the heart of a rural community where property and family unleash fierce passions.

Sicily, summer 1916. The women gather to harvest old Simone’s almond crop. He’s the richest landowner in the district but he has no heir. Local lad Liolà, untroubled by convention, has fathered three boys, each with a different mother. When another of the girls falls pregnant, Simone is persuaded he might recognize the baby as his own, much to his young wife, Mita's, despair. But he underestimates the power of Liolà, who has his own unusual sense of what's right and wrong - and a way with women to make your hair curl.

"Earthy, exuberant and fecund with symbolism and superstition... it leaves behind a delicious, golden glow." - The Times

"Winning... touching and entertaining, it glows with the warmth of summer." - Telegraph

"Wonderfully warm... thoroughly entertaining." - Exeunt Magazine

Tanya Ronder trained at RADA as an actress before becoming a playwright. Her plays include adaptations of Blood Wedding (Almeida Theatre), Vernon God Little (Young Vic, nominated for an Olivier Award) and Peribanez, and Table, which was the inaugural production at the National Theatre's temporary venue, The Shed.

Luigi Pirandello was an Italian dramatist, novelist, poet and short story writer, whose best known plays include Six Characters in Search of an Author, Tonight We Improvise and Each in His Own Way. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1934.