Premiers - 2019/2020

Happiness, making a living and a career are what the five Parondi brothers Vincenzo, Simone, Rocco, Ciro and Luca hope to achieve. Following their father's death, they decide to move with their mother from their village in the South of Italy to booming Milan sometime in the early 1950s. The family’s path is marked out by moving to the city, defying their destiny, fighting it, and the hope of returning to their village.

There are universal themes and figures that keep coming back in new guises. In reality, we know little about them, their characters are shrouded in mystery, but through them, we can express ourselves and our age. One such figure is Euripides’ Medea, the unfortunate, betrayed, loving – in Babits's words, "always modern" – woman who commits an inhumane act of jealousy: she takes the lives of her own children. In spite of what she does, Euripides attempts to achieve the impossible by getting his audience to sympathise with this desperate heroine battling against her demons. 

Tartuffe, a profoundly religious figure, is gaining influence in the wealthy home of the Orgons, and is about to cheat Orgon out of his fortune and get his daughter's hand in the process. Soon everyone sees through Tartuffe's tricks – except Orgon. The family come up with a plan to catch the fraudster out. A simple comedy plot, implemented ingenuously by none other than the brilliant genius of the history of drama: Molière.

The comedy of passing away

"We humans can only suffer and be happy in one way, whether we’re at the beginning or at the end of our lives,"

says István Örkény in the Preface to his tragicomedy "The Cats Play". When we hold a photo of our youth, it seems that our life can be captured in a moment of self-abandonment, and though the years go by, our passion and pain remain just as alive inside...

"We exist as long as our memory survives. But it’s terrible when we start to manipulate memories without restraint. ”  (Andrzej Bubień director) 

What are we going to do without the prompter? What can we do if there is no one to help, there is no one to rely on when we’re in trouble? Who is this prompter who always sits in the dark, with their back toward us, alone, and yet we look to this person to help us out of botched, hopeless situations?

Based on documents from the period, archive records, and Albert Wass’ novel Thirteen Apple Trees, the stage book serves as a frame of reference in which to present the plight and perseverance of a small people set to persist in the "Great World Order".