Some Girl (s) by Neil LaBute at Piccolo Bellini, journey into the sentimental past of an adultescent [Show review]

Guy decides to meet his ex-girlfriends before getting married to sort out past mistakes. How will it end?

Who of us has never imagined to meet again the partners of their sentimental past to find out what was wrong with it? Or to apologize for the mistakes made? In short, to cleanse the conscience and go back to living with less weight on the heart?

This is what Guy , the protagonist of Some Girl(s) , chooses to do, a brilliant and engaging comedy written by American playwright Neil LaBute in 2005 which achieved immediate success and also became an off-Broadway show and a feature film.

Guy is a young man who is about to get married and, before reaching this milestone, intends to take a journey back in time through his love life by meeting some of his ex-girlfriends, to clean up "the mess he made in his love life along the road to maturity." Thus, on the minimalist stage designed by Marcello Cotugno in the stage version of Some Girl(s) staged at the Piccolo Bellini in Naples with Gabriele Russo in the title role, four women, all different but united by one thing: their hearts are still broken by Guy.

From the shy and insecure Sam, her first high school love, to the seductive but fragile Tyler, from the mature but vindictive Lindsay to the emancipated and intelligent Bobbi, her last great love, the "adultescente" protagonist of the LaBute comedy decides to see them again all one last time, crossing the United States and choosing, for each of them, a hotel room that seems to always be the same but which, thanks to a skilful use of lights and scenography, manages to convey the atmosphere to the viewer and the spirit of each meeting.

The audience laughs at the ironic and witty jokes of the characters on stage, at the squabbles and dialogues steeped in humor but also with sarcasm and desire for revenge (especially from the "ex") and ends up recognizing themselves in almost all the sentimental situations that Guy and Sam, Guy and Tyler, Guy and Lindsay, Guy and Bobbi, have crossed and left behind, and in their love skirmishes that still let us glimpse and feel the presence of affection mixed with the desire to "make her pay" to the man-child Guy.

Only at the end will we understand the true nature of Guy , a boy who is unable to face adulthood because he is too driven by his ambition to become a famous writer, struck by an absurd and paradoxical vanity that does not allow him to honestly confront any of his past loves and who will therefore be condemned to live forever in his dissatisfaction.

A child of our unstable contemporaneity, which we can fully understand but we can not condemn, because it is so believable, in its clumsy uniqueness, to contain a piece of each of us.

Inevitably, the comedy “goes out” of the theatre and leads spectators to reflect and recognise themselves in Guy, and to watch, stimulated by curiosity, the fourth episode of Some Girl(s) where they will meet Reggie, the fifth woman “absent” from the theatre scene but present in an online extra.

Some Girl(s) will be on stage at the Piccolo Bellini in Naples until December 28, 2014. For information on times and ticket prices, see the dedicated article on Napolike.

Photo | VIA