You Are Always With Me

A bittersweet romance, a pair, both lonely in their own ways, found themselves drawn to each other. As they form a bond that defies conventions, their relationship makes us ask whether love holds the answer to loneliness? Can we ever make love shape our lives for the better?

Afandiyev’s You Are Always With Me caused a stir with its thinly disguised observations on class in Soviet society when first staged in Soviet-era Azerbaijan in 1964.Its resonances are still as powerful and relevant today, in its gentle examination of how love naturally takes different forms in the different stages of our lives, and the way how the world seeks to impose and mould those loves. Afandiyev leaves us with the confidence that the individual will always prevail in the face of society’s hypocrisy and control.