Inner Voices, 20.3.14

Brothers Peppe & Toni Servillo as the Saporito brothers
in di Filippo's satire 'Inner Voices' 

For the third time in two weeks Motley was successful queueing for returns for a sold-out show! 

Eduardo di Filippo’s black comedy (‘Le voci di dentro’) was a satire on the breakdown of trust between neighbours and within families in a morally ravaged post-war Italy (1948).  This was its first UK outing since Ralph Richardson and Joan Plowright played it back in 1982 (Richardson's last performance). 

The show was performed in Neapolitan by the Teatro Uniti di Napoli on a minimalist white set at the Barbican.  Although reliance on surtitles eliminated some of the immediacy, it was fascinating to hear how different Neapolitan sounds from standard Tuscan Italian.  One of only three London showings on a global tour, tickets were sold out as it starred and was directed by the great Tony Servillo, undisputed ‘uomo di punta’ (top dog) of contemporary Italian stage and screen (star of ‘The Great Beauty’ and ‘Il Divo’).
 

Belated repentance from an un-tailored Tony Servillo in 'Inner Voices'

Servillo played Alberto Saporito, a broken-down bachelor who shares an apartment (whose only belongings are a set of broken wooden school-chairs) with his brother Carlo (an engagingly hang-dog performance from Servillo’s own brother Peppe).  Also living with them is ‘Zio Nicola’, an uncle who’s stubbornly chosen to live in silence--communicating only via fireworks--“because the world is deaf”.  It was fascinating to see Servillo exchange his crisp in-control on-screen demeanour to play—or more accurately to under-play--a jowly Chaplinesque bumbling tramp.  Servillo conveyed mountains with simple hand gestures, at one point transmitting all the lowliness of post-war humanity just by holding his head in his hands. 


Alberto hoping for breakfast from the family he's just denounced

His character Alberto, possibly suffering from a guilty conscience, experiences a dream (a mirror image of the maid's earlier dream about a 'murderous maggot') telling him his neighbours, the Cimmarutas (a collection of seaside-postcard grotesques) have killed his friend Aniello.  The diminutive Don Pasquale Cimmaruta (Gigio Morra) is being cuckolded by his voracious corseted late middle-aged wife, while their two children bicker and their Aunt Rosa (Betti Pedrazzi) bullies the lethargic maid Maria.  After denouncing the family to la polizia municipale, Alberto hastens round to their breakfast table, both to cadge food and to witness their arrests in person (“Burn them alive!” he cries disconcertingly, as they’re led away.). 

What you'd call a 'lived-in' face!
Neapolitan playwright Eduardo di Filippo (1900-84)

In classic absurdist style, the dream then becomes father to the reality as, despite Alberto's belated repentance, each member of the family denounce each other in turn, thinking he has evidence of their guilt.  This is a world in which everyone is prepared to sell everyone else out for their own advantage.  It was far closer to the ‘theatre of the absurd’ than to Pirandello, with some of the same sense of menace as Rhinocéros (which Motley was privileged to see at the Barbican last year en francais).  The two dried-up brothers also had more than a hint of Beckett's Vladimir and Estragon about them.  It was altogether a more interesting offering than the Almeida’s blandly whimsical production of di Filippo’s ‘Filumena’ (Motley's only other experience of this playwright) and deservedly generated a rapturous audience response.