United States, late nineteenth century, a parlor, two ladies, and a maid. Everything would suggest a conventional plot, a meeting between somewhat affected friends, but the form does not correspond to the substance: in the conversation laced with elegant vocabulary, vulgarities abound, and we learn that the two were once a very close couple.

The expression “Boston Marriage,” in fact, was in use in New England at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries to allude to a cohabitation between women economically independent from men.

After the separation, Anna, the hostess, has found a wealthy man. This is a Mamet different from the usual, who takes a vacation from gravity and plays for the fun of playing, winking at the brilliant experiments of Tennessee Williams, but, above all, at Oscar Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest.”

The absolute protagonist, in fact, along with the actresses, is language and, conversely, the unspoken, the allusion, the extravagance, the paradox. Mamet enjoys parodying the pompous prose of the era, but behind the apparent absurdity of the surface lies the ambitious intent of overturning reality through a joke that aims to create a bit of refined scandal.

Here lies the “political” sense of a text that entertained and amazed the American audience of 1999 as much as it can surprise the Italian one today. The continuous play of facades becomes the key to this staging that seeks to amplify the prestidigitation function of the work, which hides on one side to reveal on the other: a film set or a series where fiction seems to be the only way to tell the truth.

It is a challenge for great actresses like Maria Paiato and Mariangela Granelli, true tightrope walkers of words and emotions who will play together with Ludovica d’Auria in this bizarre last blood game to unmask every convention regarding Love.

By David Mamet

With Maria Paiato, Mariangela Granelli, and Ludovica D’Auria

Directed by Giorgio Sangati, produced by Centro Teatrale Bresciano, Teatro Biondo di Palermo in agreement with Arcadia & Ricono Ltd, by kind permission of A3 Artists Agency.

For information and reservations, Circolo Cultura e Stampa Bellunese tel. 0437 948911, email: info@ccsb.it.

United States, late 19th century, a parlor, two ladies and a maid. Everything would suggest a conventional plot, a meeting between somewhat affected friends, but the form does not correspond to the substance…