Hard Times

Hard Times depicts the industrialized world of the 19th century through a panorama of the gloomy, smoke-filled town of Coketown. Gradgrind, a staid citizen and school founder, raises his children, Luisa and Tom, according to the principle of pure reason. Growing up alongside them is the warm-hearted circus girl Sissy. Luisa marries the smug factory owner and banker Josiah Bounderby in a pragmatic and loveless union. Tom, who is becoming increasingly brutalized, goes astray. Even honest factory workers like Stephen Blackpool and the weaver Rachael are crushed by a system that knows neither hardship nor morality nor dignity. And the city? It pulsates to the rhythm of the machines, while the people begin to question this order and—weary and lonely—rise up against injustice and poverty.

Charles Dickens tells a story of cold-hearted profit-seeking, social inequality, and interpersonal alienation. He paints a world in which feelings are considered a weakness and only what is measurable counts: facts, figures, and utility. Hard times for each of the many characters who are shattered by the coldness of this bourgeois ideology—but also an opportunity for a tender, powerful force that lies within them all to rise up against it and offer hope: humanity’s longing for creativity, warmth, and connection.

Director Antú Romero Nunes takes a tender and humorous look at a society that values numbers over hearts—and, through music and a large ensemble, sets out in search of imagination, empathy, and solidarity.