Martine. Jean-Jacques Bernard

‘When you’re away I can’t survive without her, I keep talking to her about you. And I hurt her. I seem to have to do it.’ The Great War is over. It is the summer of 1920, in rural France. By a dusty road, a girl is sitting under the shade of an apple tree. She sees someone walking towards her. He is a young man, just back from fighting in Syria. He joins her under the tree, and a tragic love story begins. Often compared to Chekhov, and much admired by Harold Pinter, Jean-Jacques Bernard creates a unique emotional landscape of beauty and longing, desire and disappointment. Martine was written in 1922 and John Fowles wrote this translation for a revival at the National Theatre in 1985.