At the Teatro delle Arti in Salerno Giuseppe Zeno brings to the stage 'Swept away by an unusual destiny in the blue sea of ​​August'

The Teatro Delle Arti in Salerno is preparing to host one of the most beloved faces of Italian television on Saturday 18th (20.45 pm) and Sunday 19th (18 pm): Giuseppe Zeno.

The Neapolitan actor, together with and Euridice Axen, will be the protagonists of the text written by Lina Wertmüller for the cinema and brought to success in 1974 by Giancarlo Giannini and Mariangela Melato. A story of love and class struggle, a powerful allegory of the ideological, economic and gender conflicts that cross human society.

The strength of the text is represented by the external and disenchanted but at the same time ironic, grotesque and humorous gaze, with which the director and author has highlighted great social contrasts: an industrialized north compared to a poor and exploited south; a communist vision placed next to a concrete capitalist spirit ambitious for wealth.

“Tackling in the theatre Swept Away by Lina Wertmüller, one of the greatest directors of Italian cinema - author who has profoundly influenced the culture and imagination of our country – is a challenge that we have decided to accept with due humility” explains director Marcello Cotugno.

“Our version of “Swept Away in the Blue Sea of ​​August”, based on the play by Lina Wertmüller written with Valerio Ruiz, relocates the story to the contemporary dimension, choosing as a new battlefield the different socio-cultural climate of a late capitalist society, in which new tensions and new contradictions determine and direct conflicts and emotions between the characters. The show evokes the film without imitating it, translating the cinematic vision into theatrical action: both with the presence and physicality of the actors who sweat, chase each other, fight, love each other on stage, as well as by resorting to a symbolic dimension that leaves open to the spectator a space of imagination and memory, as well as through the sharpness of grotesque, poignant or comic dialogues.

From this point of view, it is an extraordinary resource for me to work with actors of great talent and sensitivity such as Euridice Axen and Giuseppe Zeno. Two interpreters capable of vibrating the strings of passion and irony and of finding their own personal measure to give substance to the roles that belonged to two icons of Italian cinema: Mariangela Melato and Giancarlo Giannini. Tightrope walkers, fighters, enemies and lovers, Gennarino and Raffaella will fill the stage with the sensual tension and rough poetry that makes its way into their hardened hearts. And, in the wild and primordial horizon of the island, they will seek a state of nature in which it is truly possible to meet and love each other beyond all differences”, concludes Cotugno.

Tickets to attend the performance can be purchased at the Teatro Delle Arti box office, open from 17pm to 21pm.