Simme Wouters/Jasper Stoop - the Great Ricardo

A magician called Ricardo is expected at an intervention by his own family in a dreary seaside resort. He decides not to go. Instead, he leaves everything behind and swims into the sea. There he slowly drifts away from the world: a master escapist who just can't seem to escape his own escape.

The Great Ricardo is a performance about an incorrigible fantasist who embarks on a life-defining balancing act. For what is the line between madness and imagination? How do you keep these things apart on your own? And even if you manage to stay afloat in a vast sea, how do you make peace with a life made up of a succession of metre-high waves?

In The Great Ricardo, the circus atmosphere of Balkan folk music alternates with the music of a classical string ensemble influenced by Arabic scales. Together with composer Radek Fedyk and the musicians of the Amsterdam Andalusian Orchestra, Jasper Stoop and Simme Wouters create a musical ocean that undulates, flows and stills.