A head-first dive into history, staging the six years that shook Italy. Taking as his cue the novel by Scurati, Massimo Popolizio has created an epic and moving play, a thriller whose end we already know; eighteen actors and eighty characters to tell the story of the rise of Mussolini.
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Teatro Strehler
“Eighteen actors passing the baton – explains Massimo Popolizio –; freed of all rhetoric, they focus the attention of the audience on the relentless rhythm of a rise to power that took place in a moment of profound weakness among institutions and political parties”. Thus Massimo Popolizio illustrates the script in thirty-one scenes that he has based on the novel M Il figlio del secolo by Antonio Scurati; moving, with a dense montage and an epic pace, the play spans the six year period (1919 - 1925) that followed the Great War, with the Fiume Enterprise, the country’s faltering steps towards the socialist revolution, the reaction and spread of Squadrismo, the daring March on Rome (for which October 2022 marks the centenary) and the relentless efficiency of a political doctrine that used violence to avoid the constraints of justice.
The leading figures are the founder of Fascism and his deputies, who we hear expressed in third and first person; Marinetti, D’Annunzio, Margherita Sarfatti, the antagonists Nicola Bombacci, Pietro Nenni and Giacomo Matteotti (also examined through the moving epistolary relationship with his wife Velia), Italo Balbo, the disbanded soldiers of the Great War and an entire mass of individuals who rose the ranks. And at the centre of the scene is the entire national community, that “dark country” that allowed dictatorship to take hold.
Duration: 180’ including interval
Learn more
Booklet
Read“Eighteen actors passing the baton – explains Massimo Popolizio –; freed of all rhetoric, they focus the attention of the audience on the relentless rhythm of a rise to power that took place in a moment of profound weakness among institutions and political parties”. Thus Massimo Popolizio illustrates the script in thirty-one scenes that he has based on the novel M Il figlio del secolo by Antonio Scurati; moving, with a dense montage and an epic pace, the play spans the six year period (1919 - 1925) that followed the Great War, with the Fiume Enterprise, the country’s faltering steps towards the socialist revolution, the reaction and spread of Squadrismo, the daring March on Rome (for which October 2022 marks the centenary) and the relentless efficiency of a political doctrine that used violence to avoid the constraints of justice.
The leading figures are the founder of Fascism and his deputies, who we hear expressed in third and first person; Marinetti, D’Annunzio, Margherita Sarfatti, the antagonists Nicola Bombacci, Pietro Nenni and Giacomo Matteotti (also examined through the moving epistolary relationship with his wife Velia), Italo Balbo, the disbanded soldiers of the Great War and an entire mass of individuals who rose the ranks. And at the centre of the scene is the entire national community, that “dark country” that allowed dictatorship to take hold.
Duration: 180’ including interval
Learn more
Booklet
ReadMeetings and insights
Credits
M Il figlio del secolo
a play by Massimo Popolizio
based on the novel by Antonio Scurati
dramaturgy collaboration Lorenzo Pavolini
sets Marco Rossi
costumes Gianluca Sbicca
lighting Luigi Biondi
video Riccardo Frati
sound Alessandro Saviozzi
movements Antonio Bertusi
assistant directors Mario Scandale, Giulia Sangiorgio
with Massimo Popolizio and Tommaso Ragno and with (in alphabetical order) Riccardo Bocci, Gabriele Brunelli, Tommaso Cardarelli, Michele Dell’Utri, Giulia Heathfield Di Renzi/Aurora Spreafico, Raffaele Esposito, Flavio Francucci, Francesco Giordano, Diana Manea, Paolo Musio, Michele Nani, Alberto Onofrietti, Francesca Osso, Antonio Perretta, Sandra Toffolatti, Beatrice Verzotti
a Piccolo Teatro di Milano-Teatro d’Europa, Teatro di Roma–Teatro Nazionale, Luce Cinecittà production
in collaboration with Centro Teatrale Santacristina
Tickets
Category of performance Piccolo Production
Stalls full price € 40 | Discounted (under 26 and over 65) € 23
Balcony full price € 32 | Discounted (under 26 and over 65) € 20
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email promozione.pubblico@piccoloteatromilano.it