Cruel And Tender is a brand new play by Martin Crimp which is based on an extremely old one: Sophocles’ Trachiniae. Far away a battle rages and an entire city is turned to dust. Amelia can’t sleep. She waits for news of her husband. He’s a great general and this seems to be a decisive victory. But as the motives for the war start to look disturbingly personal, his wife becomes desperate to hold on to his love. Crimp thrusts the characters from Sophocles’ drama into a harsh modern world of political hypocrisy and emotional warfare.