Arthur Miller's The American Clock, on stage at the Vascello Theatre and directed by Elio De Capitani, presents audiences with one of the great American playwright's lesser-known masterpieces.
The play, composed in 1980, is the most innovative of the others, as it aspires to an original form of total theater, influenced by the teachings of Brecht - both the expressionist style of his early plays and the later developments of epic theater - to achieve unprecedented results, drawing inspiration from a typically American theatrical genre, the vaudeville. A choral text in which the young Academy Company, made up of actors and actresses who have recently completed their studies at the “Silvio d'Amico” National Academy of Dramatic Arts, showcases their talent.
In this play, Miller takes us back to the depths of the Great Depression and the crisis that hit America in 1929. Compared to his previous works, the playwright broadens the scope of his narrative: the action is not limited to the American family alone, but encompasses the entire country. The plot centers on the Baum family -a mirror image of Miller's - who have lost everything after the financial crash and are forced to abandon Manhattan for a tiny apartment in Brooklyn. The father Moe Baum has been forced to declare bankruptcy, and his wife Rose struggles to accept poverty and the family's resulting new social status. His story is told by intertwining the memories of his young son, Lee, and Arthur Robertson, a businessman who escaped the financial collapse by foreseeing the outcome of the great bubble that dragged the country into the most serious economic and social crisis known to date. The two evoke and stage a whirlwind of dozens of characters, a crowd from the most diverse social backgrounds, a vast choral fresco: society itself becomes the protagonist, and with it its responsibility to the individual and that of political and economic power to the community. The play thus explores how America faced the Great Depression and how this period fostered social change in the country.
With his direction, Elio De Capitani, to represent his vision of this work, undoubtedly Miller's most experimental, has imagined a circus, between Brecht and Fellini, a new circus-theatre suited to this era of drastic and ferocious changes, in which, under the mask of a clown, man shows his true personality.
With: Angelica Barelli, Alessandro Buono, Melissa Del Carmen Chaigan, Chiara Casarin, Laura Cestaro, Flavio D’Andrea, Edoardo De Padova, Anna Demichelis, Luca Duarte Di Gangi, Vittorio Maria Mearelli, Giorgio Petrotta, Gabriele Maria Pizzurro, Caterina Rugghia, Pietro Saccomani, Nicola Tagliatori, Chiara Tognarini, Chiara Trombini, and Nicola Vantaggi.
Translation: Cristina Viti
Director: Elio De Capitani
Sets and costumes: Carlo Sala
Original music performed live and arrangements: Mario Arcari
Photo: official poster of the show
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