Drama in San Giorgio

poster for the play

On Friday night the play “La Casa della Luna Calante” (the house of the waning moon)was performed by some citizens of San Giorgio. The play was based on a short play by Furio Bordon called “Le Ultime Lune” and tells the story of an old man who is leaving his house to move into an old people’s home and before he leaves he has a conversation with his dead mother about the highs and lows of his life. In the second act he is in the home and talks about his life in the home and his preparations for death. It is a very bitter-sweet, tragic-comedy. The producer of the San Giorgio version Giuliana kept the basic outline of the play and added some comic scenes about the individual characters in the home. Opting to stress the comic elements in the play was a wise thing to do which in the context of a Friday evening’s entertainment in small village in Italy with an amateur cast. They also opted to use mostly dialect instead of italian. When you talk to people in San Giorgio about the use of dialect they also say that if they want to tell a joke then it works better in dialect. Unfortunately for me it meant most of the verbal humour was lost as some characers spoke pure dialect, others a mix and some pure italian. So it was like listening to a badly tuned radio where some sentences would come across loud and clear and then fade into a incoherent noise and then a few more words in focus. However, all the audience enjoyed the play. There was lots of laughter and lots of applause. Applause when the actors came on and people recognised them and lots of applause when people left the stage. Even I got into the game applauding when I recognised someone – “Sanzio” (our agricultural advisor) turned up as the owner of the home and then “Mrs Bella Giornata” came on as a women listening to the woes of her daughter’s love life. (I have never got to know Mrs Bella Giornata’s real name but as we always seem to meet in the street when the sun is shining and she always says “Che bella giornata!” this has become her name). The play ended with characters in the play reciting a poem about the value of life and the need to live now and then bright cheerful music was played, the actors bowed and danced while the audience clapped happily in time to the music. Everyone left with a smile on their faces.

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