Miss Marple
Translated from the Italian. Titles, names, venues and press headlines are kept as originally published.
Piccola frase da mettere su tutti gli spettacoli, sara’ quella che verra’ visualizzata sull’ anteprima dello spettacolo.
MARIA AMELIA MONTI
in
MISS MARPLE,
Giochi di prestigio
byAGATHA CHRISTIE
adattamento teatrale by EDOARDO ERBA
with
ROBERTO CITRAN
SABRINA SCUCCIMARRA
SEBASTIANO BOTTARI
MARCO CELLI
GIULIA DE LUCA
STEFANO GUERRIERI
LAURA SERENA
set design LUIGI FERRIGNO
costumi ALESSANDRO LAI
luci CESARE ACCETTA
music e FRANCESCO FORNI
directed by PIERPAOLO SEPE
Miss Marple – Agatha Christie's most famous detective – takes the stage in Italy for the first time, brought to life with great charm by Maria Amelia Monti in an infectious, addictive performance. With her are two actors of original talent, Roberto Citran and Sabrina Scuccimarra, and a group of young performers bursting with stage energy. We are in the late 1940s, in a Victorian house in the English countryside. Miss Marple has gone to visit her old friend Caroline, a philanthropist who lives there with her third husband, Lewis, and various children and stepchildren from previous marriages. This extended family also includes a strange young man, Edgar, who helps Lewis run the philanthropic activities. The group is riven by bad moods and hidden hatreds, which Miss Marple soon notices. During a quiet after-dinner evening, Edgar suddenly loses his nerve: gun in hand, he threatens Lewis and forces him into his study. The crime takes place before everyone's terrified eyes. But things are not as they seem. While waiting for the police to arrive, it will be up to Miss Marple to understand that what happened is not what everyone thinks they saw. The audience has been distracted by something that allowed the murderer to act undisturbed. As in theatre. As in a conjuring trick. Adapting the novel, Edoardo Erba creates a contemporary comedy, which Pierpaolo Sepe's direction brings out with originality without spoiling Agatha Christie's unmistakable spirit.
Director's notes
It is no surprise that, of all genres – literary and otherwise – the mystery remains the most popular, as the proliferation of TV series bearing its label and that of its sub-genres (noir, thriller, crime) shows. What is surprising is that such a gruesome field should count among its founders an elderly English lady, Agatha Christie, and that we owe her the invention of one of the first female 'criminologists' in history: Miss Jane Marple. A shrewd judge of human nature, Christie was able, like no one else, to exploit the subtle attraction people feel towards their most lethal side and their bloodiest instincts, and used it to build plots that remain masterpieces of suspense and mystery to this day. Agatha Christie's work is certainly nothing new for Edoardo Erba, the Italian translator of her plays and author of our adaptation, but only with an actress of Maria Amelia Monti's calibre was it possible to imagine bringing her most famous detective – Miss Marple – to the stage for the first time. I left Maria Amelia free to invent 'her' Marple, and the result is a character very different from the placid little old lady from the country we are used to. This Marple is much closer to the one in Christie's early novels: more mischievous, rustic and unpredictable, but still gifted with the sharp logic that lets her get to the heart of things. We see her sitting at her knitting, like someone following a line of thought woven back on itself, to untangle the skein and find the thread of truth. Like a Shakespearean fool in constant counterpoint with the other characters – busy chasing their own troubles – Miss Marple highlights with irony and lightness the ridiculous passions from which no one is immune, giving us back human nature as it is with brazen frankness, without being taken in by the masks we wear every day to hide it from others. Sets, lighting, costumes and music combine to build a dark, tense thriller, constantly lightened by Maria Amelia Monti's intelligent and irresistible irony. You really have to be a great conjurer to tell mysteries – and where, if not in the theatre, the place of dissimulation par excellence, can the riskiest trick of all succeed? Pierpaolo Sepe
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