M. Il figlio del secolo

Eighteen actors to tell without rhetoric the rise of Mussolini in the six years following the end of the First World War, from the foundation of his fasci di combattimento (“fighting leagues”) to the daring March on Rome (whose centenary occurs in October 2022), up to his famous speech in the Chamber of Deputies on 3 January 1925, with the public assumption of responsibility for Matteotti’s death, the political consecration and the spread of squadism.

Signed by the actor and director Massimo Popolizio, the show is based on the historical novel written by Antonio Scurati. The theatrical text is divided into 30 chapters and follows a circular structure that opens with the last lines of the book and then returns to that same fateful sentence pronounced in the Chamber of Deputies: “If fascism was a criminal association, the responsibility for this is mine”.

The protagonists of the story are the founder of fascism and his supporters, Marinetti, D’Annunzio, Margherita Sarfatti, the antagonists Nicola Bombacci, Pietro Nenni and Giacomo Matteotti, Italo Balbo and the veterans of the Great War, but also the entire national community, “the dull country “ made of confused, accomplice people.