A bold new play has landed at Cardiff’s Sherman Theatre, and it’s asking some pretty uncomfortable questions about the way we date, connect, and hand over our emotional lives to algorithms.
Sian De Bergerac is the latest production to hit the Sherman stage, and it’s turning heads for all the right reasons. Taking the classic Cyrano De Bergerac story as its starting point, this modern reimagining drops the famous long-nosed romantic into the world of dating apps, ghosting, and digital personas. The result is something that feels both timely and genuinely unsettling.
The play centres on what happens when we stop trusting ourselves to express how we feel and instead outsource those feelings to technology. In a world where swiping right has replaced locking eyes across a crowded room, Sian De Bergerac pushes the audience to think hard about whether any of it is actually real.
The production has drawn strong reactions from Cardiff audiences since opening, with many pointing to its sharp writing and visually striking staging. It does not shy away from the more dystopian edges of modern romance. The dating app world it portrays is glossy on the surface but hollow underneath, which is very much the point.
What makes this play stand out is how it handles that tension between style and substance. The staging is sleek and contemporary, matching the digital world it is critiquing. But underneath all the aesthetic polish, there is a genuinely emotional story about longing, identity, and the fear of being truly known by another person.
The Sherman Theatre has built a strong reputation in recent years for staging work that reflects modern Welsh life and broader social questions in ways that feel fresh rather than preachy. Sian De Bergerac fits neatly into that tradition. It is the kind of show that sparks conversation on the way out of the theatre, which is exactly what good theatre should do.
Cardiff has a growing theatre scene that often punches above its weight, and productions like this one are a big reason why. The Sherman continues to be a space where new and challenging work gets the platform it deserves, drawing in audiences who might not typically think of themselves as regular theatregoers.
The themes here will land hard for anyone who has spent time navigating the modern dating landscape. The exhaustion of maintaining an online persona, the strange intimacy of chatting with someone you have never met, and the creeping anxiety that you are being curated rather than known. These are feelings a huge chunk of the audience will recognise immediately.
Sian De Bergerac does not offer easy answers to any of this. It is not a morality tale warning people off their phones. Instead it sits with the complexity of it all, acknowledging that these tools can bring people together while also asking whether the connections they create are as solid as they feel in the moment.
For anyone in Cardiff looking for theatre that is genuinely engaging and relevant to the world outside the theatre doors, this one is well worth your time.