Roberto Saviano and Mimmo Borrelli have something in common. Their place of birth, Naples; their generation, both born in 1979; a different but equally lucid and passionate way of reading ‘the essence of Naples’ Both have a strong bond with the Piccolo Teatro: Saviano was on stage for the first time in 2009 with La bellezza e l’inferno directed by Serena Sinigaglia; in 2014 Mimmo Borrelli brought Malacrescita to the Teatro Studio, a Medea from the ‘Terra dei Fuochi’ (the area between Naples and Caserta characterised by the illegal dumping of toxic waste and the illegal burning of refuse). For both, their work is based on words. Those of Saviano as the only way to pose resistance; those of Borrelli chiselled in a constant contamination between literature and popular culture. Both recount the criminal underworld, Saviano through chronicles, Borrelli through a form of classical tragedy. Their words are woven together in this new production by the Piccolo Teatro to once again speak of ‘the essence of Naples’, fragments from the history of the city, presented as anecdotes both serious and grotesque,through the symbol of Naples par excellence, the Patron Saint of the City San Gennaro, and the rituality that surrounds his figure.

“In imagining a play on San Gennaro – says Saviano – we see a story of Naples over the centuries. The Saint is protagonist in his role as mediator, the divide between good and evil, between  the celestial and the underground, between the light of our city and the darkness of its contradictions”. “The cult of San Gennaro took hold in the 15th century – continues Borrelli – intertwining with pagan traditions. And as the key to this religiousness is this very mix, the same contamination can be found in the rich, vital and baroque language that we use to build our story, a language which presents on stage a multi-layered tradition which has developed over the centuries”.
It is a Neapolitan Divine Comedy, with Saviano as Virgilio and Borrelli as Dante, a narrative and figurative voyage trusted to the narrative skills of Saviano, a dramatic journey which orbits around the potent stage presence of Borrelli, but also a linguistic journey, in the destructive – almost ‘devastating’ manner of Borrelli, as well as musical, with its Parthenopean sonority transmitted through the live music of Antonio Della Ragione e Gianluca Catuogno.