
The show at the Teatro Nazionale, with direction, sets, lighting, sound, and costumes by Alessandro Serra, is loosely based on Sophocles's tragedies on the Greek myth of Oedipus. The staging, which includes elements of song and dance, explores the myth through a reinterpretation of the Grecanic language, highlighting the loss of collective knowledge and ritual in contemporary society, reflecting on the ruins of modern civilization.
The play's text, adapted from Sophocles's Oedipus Rex and Oedipus at Colonus, translated by Salvino Nucera, and its scenes, rich in chiaroscuro and immersed in a darkness almost acting as a metaphor for Oedipus's blindness, enclose the protagonist in an oppressive grip that leads him to discover the terrible truth of his past, only to then transform into sandy, desert landscapes that welcome him as a stranger in Thebes.
The complex work on language is also part of the director's attempt to reconstruct the sound of Greek tragedy by drawing on a language rather than a dialect, the Grecanic, still spoken today in a few areas of Calabria, in a strip of land that was once Magna Graecia. The character of Oedipus thus emerges from the ruins of classical tragedy, rediscovering the voice of the polis and its ritual, in search of a collective knowledge now lost.
With Alessandro Burzotta, Salvatore Drago, Francesca Gabucci, Sara Giannelli, Jared McNeill, Chiara Michelini, Felice Montervino; voices and songs: Bruno de Franceschi.
Photo: Teatro dell'Opera di Roma, ph by Yasuko Kageyama
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