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Published in 1958, “Gli zii di Sicilia” is a collection of three short stories with a historical setting America’s aunt, Forty-eight, Stalin’s deathto which a fourth will be added in 1961 Antimony. Leonardo Sciascia had felt the need to peer into the folds of a recent past of his homeland, offering his point of view on the epochal transition of the society dominated by aristocrats, forced to give way to the power of the bourgeoisie, alongside his word to that of other contemporary writers, primarily the Tomasi Di Lampedusa of Leopardin obvious assonance. Forty-eight it had national echoes, but the writer investigates the concept of revolution in a territory where secular inaction reigned. The result is a raw and ironic portrait of the island reality that Sciascia knew well. The Catania building intended to highlight this interesting production, involving the Sciascia Project numerous artists who brought the three stories to the stage, of which Forty-eight it’s the second show.
Sicily seen by a disappointed Sicilian, in the brilliant dramaturgy of the award-winning Genoese Laura Sicignano overflows from the woodwork of the Futura room, enveloping the spectator in a carousel of gestures, sounds, words, strictly by the writer, in a whirlwind of incessant movements, from the revolving door at the center of a dynamic and imposing scenography by Elio Di Franco, which offers different settings, at the carousel of the three formidable actors, from whose door they enter, exit, move, wearing the interesting androgynous costumes of Vincenzo La Mendola. The director’s creation offers a complex scenario in which the characters move in an incessant en travesti, giving the narrative a lively and cohesive rhythm of notable impact, to which the music and singing performed on stage by Puccio Castrogiovanni give a melic structure that alludes to the tradition of storytellers.
The director Laura Sicignano
The story of the Risorgimento, narrated by an anonymous young man who gradually becomes aware of how the world is going, takes place in Castro, a small village in the Sicilian hinterland, where nobles and peasants share life, each in their own way, amid disparities and abuses, while the religious power acts as a mediator, even in the affairs of the baron and a peasant whose husband is imprisoned to have free rein. Eros and power are intertwined in the usual plot where the weak succumb to the oppression of the stronger. But as they say in Sicily money and money cannot be hoarded. The scandal suddenly explodes, tearing apart the curtain of confidentiality in which the couple consumed their passion, with destabilizing effects, while the wind of revolution arrives and attempts to undermine the established order. The defeat of the confused and disoriented rebels was apparently revived by the arrival of Garibaldi who a few years later shook the endemic resignation in which Sicily lay, where change was readily welcomed by the dominant, indifferent and cynical classes, as long as everything remained the same.
Sciascia’s gaze veiled in bitter irony, where hope dimly glimmers alongside the lucid despondency, is innervated in the grooves of a writing delivered with confidence by Sicignano’s decisive attitude which skilfully plays with the registers of a colorful acting bordering on the grotesque, underlining the interpretative strength of Joele Anastasi, Enrico Sortino, Federica Carruba Toscano, who have generously lavished energy, passion and professional competence in a story where the writer’s pen dipped in the ink of the theatrical form, receives a careful homage to the greatness of his indisputable talent, his sensitivity, his indomitable civil commitment, with which the author has sprinkled a fertile creative path that places him among the Greats of 20th century literature.
THE FORTY-EIGHT
adapted from The uncles of Sicily by Leonardo Sciascia
direction Laura Sicignano
with Joele Anastasi Federica Carruba Toscano, Enrico Sortino
music Puccio Castrogiovanni
scenes Elio Di Franco
costumes Vincenzo La Mendola
Teatro Stabile production of Catania
At the Sala Futura of the Teatro Stabile in Catania until Sunday 26 May
Sciascia’s Quarantotto on stage at the Stabile di Catania. The failed revolution in Sicily
