«I have been acquainted with the smell of death. The sickly sugary smell that wafted in the wind, towards the rooms in this palace»; these striking words mark the beginning of House of names, the work chosen by Roberto Andò to continue his exploration of great literature, following on from Ferito a morte, which was presented at the Piccolo last season. «I was greatly moved from reading the novel by Colm Tóibín – the director explains – and in the end, almost without realising, I found myself wondering about the possibility of staging the greatest character presented in the book, Clytemnestra.»
With Isabella Ragonese, the result is a staging of «the tragic story of resentment and solitude, of blood and vendetta, of passion and suffering. » The characters created by Tóibín, who walk the line between invention and philology, «are, however, tragic not because they are based on characters from Greek tragedy – continues Andò – but because they are men and women who are completely immersed in the drama of their family and social problems, and above all because they are desperately lonely. The humanity of these characters, enclosed in the exclusive confined of psychology, thus emerges from the lack of what in myth – and thus in classic tragedy – rendered them stronger, yet also clod and distant, and in a certain manner rigid and two-dimensional; the presence of the Gods.»