Bonifica
polittico in sette quadri
by Marco Martinelli
on stage: Ermanna Montanari, Luigi Dadina. set design and costumes: Cosetta Gardini, Ermanna Montanari . light, sound design and direction: Marco Martinelli . production: Teatro delle Albe, Santarcangelo dei Teatri d’Europa, Comune di Bagnacavallo
The text
Bonifica is included in the book
Bonifica, polittico in sette quadri, by Marco Martinelli, Essegi, Ravenna, 1991 and in the book
Teatro impuro, by Marco Martinelli, Danilo Montanari Editore, Ravenna, 1997
Debut Bagnacavallo, Teatro Goldoni, december 21 1989
Press reviews:
"Scherzo, satira, ironia e significato profondo is the full title of Grabbe’s satirical play revisited by Martinelli for his rewrite which interweaves satirical apologue and surreal farce. […] The situation that triggers the action in the original play has been retained: a devil who falls to earth in high summer and is frozen, accustomed as he is to the hot blasts of hell. The 19th century diabolical events have been transformed into the obsessive dream of the doorman of a joint stock company which is having its office party in this room, amid tap dancing by young girls in Italian style skirt and white blouse and period music by Doris Day and the Lescano trio. The company trademark Leben, which means live, is hung in gigantic letters on all the walls. The chairwoman (once more the imperious Montanari) is called Condolcezza and she won’t stand for any sadness. Company turnover is increasing, thanks above all to the idea of marketing girls in suitcases, and new possibilities are on the horizon, such as opening whorehouses for sex tourism in Thailand. […] Two parallel universes and two periods of history converge in the play, in accordance with a compositional principle that Leo de Bernardinis would have liked. And they find their meeting point in the dreaming figure in red livery (Alessandro Renda) who like his opposite number in Shakespeare’s Macbeth doesn’t want to be the doorman of hell. And anyway, there’s no way out of this hell".
(Gianni Manzella, "il Manifesto", december 3 2006)
"Grabbe’s story of the little devil who falls to earth is in fact interwoven with the wholly metaphorical and allusive image of a hypothetical modern day company (whose business is girls in suitcases and whorehouses in Thailand) run by a merciless female figure who, not a random choice of name, is called Condolcezza. […] creates the fresco of a corrupt society lacking all moral scruples, where it is left to the public to decide whether little domestic monstrosities cause more or less trouble than atrocities on a planetary scale".
(Renato Palazzi, "del Teatro", november 29 2006)
"Sterminio by the Austrian Werner Schwab, and Scherzo, satira, ironia e significato profondo by the German Christian Grabbe […], if thought over together they bring on a strange dizziness in which the excess of bourgeois man’s glaring brutality, which permeates the former, provides a counterpoint to the sulphurous, comic 19th – 20th century hallucinations of the latter. […] What turns out to be most surprising in Martinelli’s operation is that strange tenderness, that almost romantic turgidity which lurks beneath the anti-naturalist and linguistically violent ashes of Schwab’s text, well highlighted in antithesis to the farcical and mockingly black comedy of the show based on Grabbe’s work, which is also rich in political echoes. And this makes the dizziness of evil even more piercing".
(Enrico Marcotti, "Libert?†", december 1 2006)
"Scherzo is Martinelli’s rewrite of Christian Dietrich Grabbe’s 1821 play in which the post-Romantic author catapults a devil to earth from the depths of hell. In Martinelli’s script the devil arrives at the headquarters of a bizarre company called Leben (“to live” in German) which markets girls in suitcases and aims to open whorehouses to satisfy the growing sex tourism demand in Thailand. The frozen Beelzebub (an excellent Alessandro Renda) assumes the form of the company’s young doorman, linked by mysterious filial bonds to the chairwoman, the persuasive but merciless Condolcezza […] The elements of parody change colour into those of the noir, or of an anguished dream: the devil himself seems to want to rebel against his fate but can do nothing against the reasoning of Condolcezza (a virtuoso vocal performance from Ermanna Montanari)".
(Mario Cervio Gualersi, "Clubbing", december 1 2006)
"Scherzo, satira, ironia e significato profondo sets up an effective subplot designed to split the action of the play into two narrative systems that proceed on different space/time planes. […] And the linking devices between the two systems are really subtle, analogically synchronizing the movements of the two worlds where the devil is a sort of provoker and experimenter who, as a sub-divinity subject to the supreme divinity (Evil, who else?), has fun showing that man in the Romantic 19th century was less miserable than he is today. […] Scherzo, in which the grotesque is blended with clownerie in a stimulating deformation, shatters any convictions about salvation, this through tight, highly pregnant dialogues and scenes of considerable figurative power. And it points out the inexorable brightness of the dark trajectory entered into by humanity.".
(Alessandro Fogli, "Corriere di Ravenna", november 13 2006)
"[…] To depict our times there remains only the short-circuit between a 2006 just slightly more imaginary than today and a 19th century that seems to have been yesterday; and the only stage action possible is produced through a perennial stasis at the Leben headquarters, where the only concession to narrative movement derives from dream. Well then, in this analysis which hints at no way out we are not only the well nourished Leben shareholders who join the party with the actors, or the naturalists who calmly sell their girlfriends: we’re also the carefree consumers who one day listen to ads and jingles, strolling down the Christmas decorated streets, and the next day pack explosives in a munitions factory. We’re all there, immortalised in an immutable temporal line. This Scherzo, then, is a snapshot of the vacuity of meaning. Coherently pursuing the general assumption underlying it, an across-the-board inquiry into the roots of what we call “evil”, the Teatro delle Albe’s project could not seek out easy alternatives or credible strategies of salvation: after having sectioned, chopped up and contested the ideology on which our society is based, to suggest “The” way out would be like relapsing into another closed ideological argument, turning away while the barbarity continues indifferent […]".
(Lorenzo Donati, "Accrocchio.it", february 5 2007)
