Quando il Diavolo Veste Rosa (2019)
Directed by XXXX
Cast
Lorenzo Savastano, restauratore di quadri……….Luciano Pinto
Chiarina, sua sorella……….Maria Conte
Matilde, loro vicina di casa……….Nicoletta Ciampini
Alfonso, marito di Matilde……….Rino Pellone
Filuccio, ortolano……….Aldo Santalucia
Virginia, sua giovane e bella matrigna……….Pina Zingales
Pummarola, uomo di fatica di Filuccio……….Carlo Pennone
Gaetano Cannavacciuoli, zio di Filuccio……….Carlo Picchetti
Pasqualino, fratello “scemo” di Filuccio……….Rocco Loiacono
Maria, cameriera dei Savastano……….Patricia Lewis
Valeria Musso, ostertrica……….Giulia Guerrini
Architetto……….Nick Cappa
Muratori……….Bill Vocisano e Peppino Tizzano
Balia……….Rosa Tizzano
Con la partecipazione straordinaria del piccolo Matteo Christiansen
Written and first performed in Rome in 1955, Bene mio e core mio was a bold decision taken by Eduardo De Filippo in reaffirming the serious social content of his theatre. The inspiration for this new play came from his 1945 work for the stage, Napoli milionaria! (made even more accessible and popular by its film version directed by Eduardo himself). It was a work that condemned the Fascist regime, the War and its aftermath with the added negative effects on Italian life and especially family values as a consequence of American occupation.
A disenchanted De Filippo saw this negative trend gaining new strength in the 1950s as the so-called “Economic Miracle” began to take a toll on individual and social values that had withstood even the blows of a dictatorship and a disastrous war. Family ties and social interactions alike seem to waver and buckle under the stains of a new aspiring and grasping Italian petit bourgeoisie exacerbated by an unprecedented consumer driven desire for luxury goods and the social status that went with their affordability.
The question of domestic harmony will always be with us. Blood ties, as between Lorenzo Savastano and Chiarina, his spinster-sister and family relationships created through marriage as in this case cunningly contrived by the humble but resourceful greengrocer Filuccio, who manages to seduce and then marry Chiarina, albeit for his own economic gain, are exploited as a front behind which individual egoism, social and personal obsessions, self-serving ploys and outright deception reveal to the public the real face behind the charactera’s social mask or persona. Brother, sister, new husband and his devious uncle Gaetano, are constantly scheming to exploit for their own selfish gain any chance they get to empower and enrich themselves even at the expense of their “nearest and dearest”, as the title ironically suggests.