At the Bellini Theater in Naples Luca Zingaretti directs and interprets "The Pride", a show that talks about love, homosexuality and the search for identity
While at the top of the government of our country we are discussing and deciding whether it is appropriate to "accept" civil unions or not and whether to recognize homosexuals some rights that as human beings should already have, on the stage of Bellini Theater of Naples was held last night the premiere of The Pride, a very current show that speaks of gender identity need homosexuality, directed and performed by the great Luca Zingaretti, staged until 28 February 2016.
The text, written in 2008 by the Greek playwright Alexi Kaye Campbell, is structured in two stories apparently separated from time, but closely interconnected, above all by the names of the three protagonists: Philip, Oliver and Sylvia.
Both stories take place in London, but almost 60 years away. In the London of the 1958 Sylvia (Valeria Milillo) can't wait to introduce her husband Philip (Luca Zingaretti) his employer Oliver (Maurizio Lombardi) author of children's stories, for which Sylvia, a former theater actress, will have to prepare illustrations. After the introductions, the three get ready to go out for dinner. It will soon be understood that Oliver does not inspire sympathy for Philip, but also that this excessive contempt actually hides repressed feelings towards him. Homosexual feelings latent and for a long, too long, dormant, which will lead the trio of friends / lovers to suffer.
Oliver will be destined to feel a love denied and not accepted, Sylvia to accept betrayal and a bitter knowledge that will finally set her free, and Philip will face, for the first time in life, his homosexuality, at a time when it was still considered a pathology to be treated with the most violent treatments. A disease from which one absolutely had to be cured.
But what would have happened if Philip and Oliver had met in our age?
We are always in London, but in the 2015, and on a rainy night Oliver, a gay journalist, is desperate for the separation from his partner, Philip, who left him after two years of life together. It will touch Sylvia, friend of both, to mediate between the two who still love each other, and to reunite them during a Pride in which both will participate. Here there is no negative reference to homosexuality, which is not considered a problem or an obstacle, but simply about love, jealousy and feelings that unite two human beings of the same sex, without prejudice or rhetoric.
The two stories, although belonging to different eras, alternate on stage, they intertwine continuously and overlap. The three characters materially cross the scenes of 1958 and 2015 apparently without criteria, but on closer inspection they represent nothing more than the invisible echo of their souls, as if there were the same spirit to merge and animate them regardless of the temporal dimensions of belonging. .
To represent a further element of union between the two stories a fourth character of the story played by the actor Alex Cendron, in the alternating role of three completely different characters: a prostitute disguised as a Nazi who tries to “console” Oliver in 2015; an editor of a men's magazine for which the 2015 Oliver would like to work; a cold and rigid psychiatrist who does a psychological interview with Philip in 1958 before taking him to therapy. Three characters who have the role of connecting the trio of protagonists to some specimens of the society that surrounds them.
The Pride touches with clarity and simplicity, but also with a veil of enigma and mystery, contemporary themes such as homosexuality and the prejudices related to it, beyond the rhetoric and the common places, but also the research and affirmation of one's own identity as an individual in the society in which we live. But it is a text that speaks, above all, of "Love" in all its forms and possibilities, of feelings and sensations rather than sex, dreams and goals, comparing the different aspects of two societies, that of the 50s and our contemporary, and their consequences on actions of the three characters.
Masterful and intense the interpretation of the three protagonists, very capable of transforming themselves into their counterparts from the past or the present in a very short time, with quick changes of clothes and scenography. A trio in which the skill and talent of Luca Zingaretti he managed to integrate perfectly, without exceeding the other two, creating an excellent interpretive synergy.
