Eduardo al Kursaal

EDUARDO AL KURSAAL

progetto by LUCA DE FILIPPOandARMANDO PUGLIESE

cinque atti unici by Eduardo De Filippo:

Sik-Sik, l'artefice magico · Requie a l'anema soja… · La voce del padrone · Quei figuri di 30 anni fa · Pericolosamente

with

SILVIO ORLANDO

ROCCO PAPALEO

CIRO CAPANO

CARLO DI MAIO

FABRIZIO LA MARCA

GEA MARTIRE

ANTONIO MILO

LELLO RADICE

MARIA LAURA RONDANINI

set design

ANDREA TADDEI

costumes

SILVIA POLIDORI

music

DINO SCUDERI

lighting design

GIACCIO TRABALZINI

musiche eseguite da

GIACOMO ZUMPANO

production photos

ORESTE LANZETTA

directed by

ARMANDO PUGLIESE

The show premiered at the Teatro Comunale in Narni on 18 November 2001. To conclude the Eduardo Project, Luca De Filippo and Armando Pugliese present a show that retraces the early years of Eduardo De Filippo's theatre career through his one-act plays. Eduardo De Filippo started very young, as a comic actor in Eduardo Scarpetta's company, together with his siblings Titina and Peppino. Born into a theatre family, in the true and ancient sense of the touring companies, by the time he began writing for the stage (the one-act Farmacia di turno dates from 1920) he had already been living on stage for sixteen years. After a few years apart, the siblings reunited in 1929 in the Molinari company, and then formed their own company, which went on to enjoy many successes in Italy's major cities. It was early December 1931, and the De Filippos, seeking ever more necessary artistic independence, signed a short seven-day contract with the Cinema Teatro Kursaal, “a venue frequented by fashionable Naples, fairly large and clean, modern in style and with a small stage roughly equipped for plays”. They opened on 25 December with Natale in Casa Cupiello and were an instant success – so great that the contract had to be extended, first by two weeks, then by several months, until May 1932. In no time, with the unanimous support of Neapolitan theatre critics, the De Filippos became the point of reference for all theatre lovers, from working-class audiences to intellectuals and Naples' cultural circles. The new one-act play that the company was contractually bound to perform every Monday, whenever the film programme changed, became an eagerly awaited event, and spurred the creation of a repertoire that was a training ground for the great masterpieces of maturity.” From Eduardo De Filippo by Giovanni Antonucci

Plots of the one-act plays – Sik-Sik l'artefice magico (1929). Sik-Sik, which sounds very close to the Neapolitan 'sicco', meaning thin, describes his poverty with his very name and appearance. “He is the traditional type of the poor, tormented strolling player … and philosopher.” He is a third-rate conjurer who needs, for his tricks, his pregnant wife Giorgetta, who “like her husband will have a certain discouraged air”, and an accomplice who must pretend to be a member of the audience. The usual accomplice fails to show up and Sik-Sik is forced to hire another…

– Requie all'anima soia (1932). Vincenzo, a poor devil, passes himself off as the Marquis Eleuterio Benincasa and guides foreign tourists around Naples, then takes them to a restaurant where he gets them to buy him lunch. He has organised things so well that he can feed his wife and children too: they turn up at the restaurant dressed in mourning and move the tourists to pity, who then buy them lunch.

– Quei figuri di trent'anni fa (1929). The play shows how an illegal gambling den works. Once again Neapolitan ingenuity is on display, with its countless tricks. But everything fails because of the stupidity of the new lookout.

– Pericolosamente (1938). It tells how to tame a shrewish wife. To combat his wife's terrible temper, the husband fires blanks at her. The wife becomes a lamb, convinced she has been granted grace by the Madonna; but the change of heart does not last long and the husband is forced to repeat the operation more and more often…

– La voce del padrone. The scuffles of a ramshackle orchestra in a recording studio as they try to record the song Adduormete cu'mme, with the singers at each other's throats and the Maestro quarrelling with the musicians.

Photographs are free of publication rights for press use. Please always credit the photographer: ph. Oreste Lanzetta

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