Castellammare, Benedetta Buccellato at the Karol Theater with "Anna Cappelli", the latest work by Annibale Ruccello

Prolonged applause, lasting more than two minutes, for Benedetta Buccellato at the Teatro Karol in Castellammare di Stabia, who on Saturday 9 February masterfully brought to the stage “Anna Cappelli”, the poignant monologue written in 1986 by the playwright from Castellammare di Stabia Annibale Ruccello.

The two were linked by a deep friendship that began during their high school and university years, consolidated over time and sealed by their shared passion for theater, of which they both later became prominent protagonists, albeit with different roles.

The performance, part of the artistic review “Passions, differences and other visions” of the Casa del contemporaneo, took place in the presence of its artistic director, Igina Di Napoli.

“Anna Cappelli” is the last work completed by Ruccello before the tragic road accident that prematurely ended his life and his art, but it is also a text that the author wrote at the request of Buccellato, inspired by a crime story that occurred in Paris at that time.

She said it herself when, at the end of her performance, she told the audience about the genesis of the show, underlining how significant it was for her to perform in the city of the playwright, as well as friend, who passed away.

The actress dominated the stage with the extraordinary interpretation of a dramatic character, protagonist of a psychological thriller. With authentic naturalness, her body, her voice and a persuasive facial expression, sometimes anticipating the words, translated the sensations and emotions of Anna Cappelli through appropriate transfigurations and an influential proxemics, in a space made essential by "a black scene and few pieces of furniture", respecting the idea of ​​theater conceived by the late artist and shared by her.

In this visual and paralinguistic context, the spectator was therefore ferried with great theatrical skill towards the truth underlying the powerful monologue.

The story depicted, set in the 60s, is the existential experience of a Latina municipal employee who emigrated to this city for work. Due to limited economic means, she rents a room, adapting to the rules - and habits - of a suffocating landlady, poorly tolerated but accepted by virtue of her condition.

Anna, the protagonist, shows a strong egocentric nature from the very beginning. She decides to move away from her family because her girl's room, in her absence, has been given to her sister.

The sense of possession is the constant reality of her life, almost an obsession that will also contaminate her feelings and that the narration reveals when the woman notices the attentions of Accountant Tonino Scarpa, her office colleague, and a story is born between them.

The man owns a house with 12 rooms, run by an old and faithful maid. Love strikes, but a love imbued with that usual, deviant sense of possession.

Anna appears submissive towards Tonino, she reluctantly accepts cohabitation even though her real goal would be to get married, in order to express a legitimate "power" over her partner and his properties. She therefore rejects the logic of the scandal generated by the failure to regularize the relationship and hides behind an apparent ease and an ostentatious nonconformism.

But life sometimes upsets plans and Anna has to deal with a reality she hadn't taken into account. Loss looms in her life ineffably. After years of living together, Tonino announces that he has decided to move to Sicily, alone, and that he plans to sell the house. Anna is completely dispossessed, her partner's decision is final and her claims have no effect.

He spends two days prey to thoughts, without sleep, until he comes to a bloody, unnatural decision that characterizes and colors the entire narration with noir.

The show was preceded by the intervention of the scholar and expert Ruccelliana, Monica Citarella who outlined a detailed, complete and effective analysis, allowing the audience to grasp the salient points of the work, promoting a conscious vision of it:

“… Annibale translates the cultural transformation, which is the one that corresponds to the anthropological mutation that Pasolini talks about, that is the passage from a society, which Pasolini called the age of bread, made of stronger bonds, of safety nets that still existed, to the industrial society, to that of the post-economic boom characterized by competitiveness and the power of consumption that naturally reduces man to his material needs.

In all of Annabile's works, stories are in the foreground, but this cultural passage is always fundamental in the characters' stories. It is no coincidence that Anna Cappelli is a story of extreme possession, we will hear a proliferation of possessive adjectives and pronouns: the room is mine, my man is mine, love is reduced to possession, to the annihilation of the self in the other and therefore the subject becomes an object and victim of love itself.

Anna Cappelli is an ontologically weak self, because material possessions serve to reassure the ontologically weak self.”