What Color Goes Well With Pale Yellow?

The dual test of the Betrothed

(from Judgement )

to H the charm of magic box Pirandello, the rigor of a classic drama which is now Testori, and language, spoken, whispered, turned, waiting to be (re) discovery of a surprisingly modern. We refer to The Betrothed the test, the last show directed by Federico Tiezzi, that avails itself, as usual, the great interpreter and friend, Sandro Lombardi. The two former "criminals" retie many common threads of poetry that, over the years, has seen its Testori in an author attended with diligence and passion that, on this occasion, has the right to double compared with two titans of our tradition such as Pirandello and Manzoni.

The curtain opens and is immediately another stage set, more crumbling, modest Metastasio in Prato that hosts us. In a building from the basic contours, geometric, from the gloomy gray blue shade, stands in a central position and raised, a red curtain, battered, with a sign of a sad circus faded yellow. On either side, spotlights to view. Besides the cloth, and a large board on the wall, two reports of regular features: "No smoking" prescription promptly rejected by the characters that we see on stage, and "emergency exit".


Place "test" the most important novel of the nineteenth century is our enterprise, very complex, full of subtleties and variations: experience means the text as a translation Manzoni dramatic, but at the same time find out the representative force in his (double) implementation stage (the "real" the show offered us the public, and that the evidence in the theatrical narrative) and, finally, in the required readings implied by such operations.

The test is, in fact, the one staged by the actors / characters in a fictional game matryoshkas that refers directly to Pirandello's Six Characters. Sandro Lombardi is the master (no director, also in harmony with this particular Testori Nobel girgentino) and is directing a shabby company around in the staging of Betrothed : the situation is an ideal prerequisite for a thorough stripped of work and play of the game, made of praticaccia tests, actors listless , prima donnas nerve elements that the actor-manager must be able to harmonize. All , sparing no suggestions, comments and input on the joints and the themes touched on by this version of novel and drama.

is a dizzying hall of mirrors that conducted by the patient-director, composed of reflections and refractions that hatch openings, rivulets of sense, innervate the original score with new life: the seventeenth century Lombard explodes in the twentieth century, because both the dialogues between the actors turn to unpublished aporias romance, in a continuous shift of the imagination. It is a constant mise en abîme of events and characters, to test the seal, the practicality in a debilitating dialectic between inside and outside, between the fiction of the first and second degree to remember some of the byzantine narratives of Borges.

But we are in Italy, in Lombardy, a land loved and hated by Testori, difficult genius, full of fertile contradictions and, paradoxically, after rewriting the classics (Ambleto, Macbeth. Edipus) that prevailed a material language, dialect and dirty in these Betrothed to the test is really a triumph for the language Manzoni modernity. Not the characters, in the face of a good test case of the young actors (Frank Colella, Deborah Zuin, the good Caterina Simonelli) supported by most experienced interpreters (the actress who is Gertrude Iaia Forte, who also suggests some break too Massimo Greenish, funny in the role of interpreter of Don Rodrigo, Hamburg and Marion D'Alessandro Schiavo). It is to be guided by Manzoni, too often relegated to school malsopportato footage and inert, to signal their strength, indomitable vitality, emerging in the patchwork of languages, records and plans are.

You get to laugh at certain phrases suspended between bitter parody and pastiche unlikely, as if this text, fairly recent (dated 1984), advances made in many other re-writes the novel, except that clearly chooses Testori of being anti-modern, obstinate lover of words and a theater whose fate, he was perhaps aware, is to succumb under the merciless blows of contemporary media. Submit this tragedy today is a formidable challenge, if not a desperate attempt to: Test of hope given by the author with utopia Lombard s'affianca, by Lombardi and Tiezzi, shape, commendable and courageous resistance.

Igor Vazzaz

(07 December 2010)

Reviewed Subject:
The Betrothed THE TRIAL OF JOHN TESTORI, directed by Federico Tiezzi, dramaturgy SANDRO AND LOMBARDI Federico Tiezzi

Coming on stage: Turin, Carignano, 7-19/12, Naples, Mercadante, 12-23/1/11; Cortona (Ar), 25/1/11; Ravenna, Alighieri, 27-30/1/11 , Genoa Court, 2-6/2/11, Bologna, Arena del Sole, 10-13/2/11, Modena, Storchi, 16-20/2/11, Rome, India, 22/2-6/3 / 11, Piombino (Li), Metropolitan, 7/3/11; 09/03/2011 Grosseto (Gr), Teatro degli Industri, 10.03.2011 Barga (Lu), 11-13/03/2011, Mass (Ms), Teatro Guglielmi
Production: Teatro Metastasio Stabile of Tuscany, Teatro Stabile di Torino , Sandro Lombardi Company
The rest of the poster: Pier Paolo Bisleri, scenes, Giovanna Buzzi, costumes, Gianni Pollini, lights, Giovanni Scandella, assistant director, Francesca della Monica, singing teacher
Quote (almost) the initial " I know that you have sold all those television stories that have come to take away any sense of it is the job of being here, actor (Master)
final Quote: "To you, pass this test, can tell you what, leave, your teacher? What if the life or here, at the scene, you will meet, as it deserves, difficulties, sorrows, anxieties and problems, knock on his door. A hers. Hope "(Master)
About the recent" mud "Saviano: " I, not you, let alone her in our history, I am really new character , enlightened, unconventional, revolutionary. What will fall to the ground taboos, they will dissolve, as the sun with the snow, rot, swill, mud, mud, under his, that is my shoe. "Word of Don Rodrigo

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