Gabriele Lavia - here performing together with Federica di Martino - is one of the most impassioned and powerful representatives of the Sicilian Nobel-prize winning playwright. Ciampa, who dives into the depths of folly to maintain a facade of respectability for his unhappy marriage, was the first of Pirandello’s great characters to win bitter revenge for a lifetime of humiliation. The cap and bells was written by Luigi Pirandello in Sicilian in 1916 for the great Angelo Musco, who did not like the play; that first and unsuccessful staging was directed by Nino Martoglio. Pirandello then translated it into Italian. “There is no doubt - says Lavia - that this “extremely black comedy” is more vivid and scathing in Sicilian. We have created a blend of the “first” and “second” versions of this reflection of a form of humanity that bases its civility on falsehood. The cap and bells is the first radical example of extremely bitter, funny and cruel “expressionist” Italian theatre, a savage form of expressionism that seeks to present a society that is “sickened with falsehood”. Truth has no place in “human society”. Only a fool could tell the truth... but in any case, “... he’s mad!”. Thus, his wife Beatrice Fiorica reveals the truth, and now she “must” be civilly and socially mad”.