On stage at the Bellini Theater in Naples the theatrical elaboration of "A Clockwork Orange", directed by Gabriele Russo with music by Morgan
Acute.
Difficult to find other words to describe this theatrical transposition of Clockwork Orange, just as it is difficult to bring the works on celluloid to the stage, there is always a scent of prejudice that hovers at work and increases the effort required to be effective.
A chaotic, confusing and asymmetric introduction to the film does nothing but feed these prejudices. Rhythms too fast, definitely out of the original schemes to which Kubrick has accustomed us, remember a similar feeling caused by many Moulin Rouge, an excessive frenzy seasoned by a lack of real contents.
Fortunately, after this abrupt acceleration, everything finds an order by resetting itself to the cinematographic work and continuing almost in parallel. Too bad that in the meantime we have lost part of the plot and, specifically, the work is almost completely lacking in the contrast between the peaceful Alex in his own home, and the violent Drugo of the outside world. Also lost the density of his love for Ludovico Van, more expressed in words than in fact.
But everything is forgiven at the end, thanks to the skill of Daniele Russo in an exquisite interpretation of Alex who almost finds a way to reincarnate in the actor, such is the quality, thanks to an excellent scenography that carefully reproduces the film's environments, and finally thanks to the splendid music, exceptional work of a Morgan not seen for some time, very faithful to the film but at the same time different and adequate to the times of the theater.
A work certainly of quality but that finds its place more as an extension of the film than in its own autonomous space.
On the other hand, in the insidious mission of staging a play taken from a cinematographic masterpiece, or from a book (such as that of Burgess from which Kubrick has drawn the film), two paths can be traveled. Bring maximum fidelity to the chronology of the story and the scenes, not to disappoint the loyal spectators, or rely on the elements of the theatrical language (lights, sound effects, music, costumes, the same scenic space and few scenic elements) to extract the spirit and the sense of the original drama and transmit it to the spectators with the power and emotional charge of the "here and now" of which only the theater is capable.
And here is the director Gabriele Russo he decides to transform Clockwork Orange in the transposition of a nightmare with surreal and dreamlike atmospheres. It is about the Alex's inner and perceptive world, here seen as the absolute protagonist of the stage action. His feelings, his visions, are the driving force of the drama, and the viewer is dragged, almost with the same violence that one witnesses, to be part of it. The obsession with "correct milk", the slang "Nadstat", the language of the Drughi invented by the same author, the visceral love (which later became repulsion) for deformed Beethoven's music that mark the action, are absolutized, becoming minimal but essential elements for the understanding of the drama, but also of the film and the original novel.
The creation of absurd “ultraviolence” scenes is masterful, a difficult task having only a stage and a few actors available, and not the possibilities of film editing. But the "slow motion" reproduction proposed by Gabriele Russo of the rape in the writer's house takes on disturbing and thrilling features precisely because of its crudeness, for its being the protagonist of the scene, almost an end in itself.
One also emerges extreme portrait of society, of a totalitarian state that leaves no freedom of choice, increasingly inclined to control consciences. An attitude that, in fact, represses youth first, to then remedy the excesses, through barbaric and inhuman systems, which make everything alive (including love) mechanical, aseptic and lobotomized.
Clockwork Orange is still on stage at Bellini Theater of Naples until 13 April 2014. Info on timetables and ticket prices in our dedicated article.
Review written in collaboration with Matteo Morreale
