Going Down to Morocco

Going Down to Marrakesh (Bajarse al moro), is one of the most emblematic and best known theatrical work of recent times in Spain. It both contributed to and documented La Movida, a drug-fuelled youth movement that placed Madrid firmly on the global cultural map in the early 1980s. Alonso de Santos' play, a commercial and critical success when first staged in 1985, was made into a film starring Antonio Banderas in 1989. Chusa, a free-spirited and spontaneously generous young drug smuggler introduces Elena, a middle-class runaway, to the apartment she shares with her cousin Pepito and her boyfriend Alberto, a rookie policeman. The result is chaos in their previously disorderly but happy life. The comedy explores opposing lifestyles of young people in 1970s Spain, during a period of radical social change. It is characterised by humour, creative use of contemporary slang, and intertextual film references. Duncan Wheeler's translation is the first English translation of the new version of the play done by Alonso de Santos in 2008 for a high-profile revival to celebrate its twenty-fifth anniversary in which he updated some of the language to make it more relevant to a contemporary audience.