NAPLES – The season of Cortese Theater continues in the spirit of a theater that doesn't simply entertain, but chooses to interrogate reality. At the Colli Aminei venue, directed by Anna Sciotti with artistic direction by Giuseppe Giorgio, "Lurdes," a play by Fortunato Calvino, will be performed on Saturday, March 7th at 9:00 PM and Sunday, March 8th at 6:00 PM. The play, starring and directed by Mario Mauro, features original music by Davide Mauro.
Calvino, an author who has always been attentive to the contradictions of the Neapolitan soul, approaches the trauma of the Coronavirus with a grotesque tone imbued with bitter irony. But "Lurdes" is not simply a play about the pandemic. The virus remains in the background, while something more subtle and persistent takes center stage: inner isolation, the fear that transcends the health emergency and becomes an existential condition.
Lurdes is a Neapolitan woman, a seemingly small figure, crushed by domestic anxieties, family tensions, and relationships strained by forced confinement. Homes become too cramped, silences are more deafening than words, and relationships explode under the weight of unresolved anxieties. It's not contagion that dominates the scene, but rather the suspension that has emptied the streets and strained bonds.
In his director's notes, Mario Mauro clarifies the work's trajectory: "An individual story that becomes universal, through the vicissitudes told by a character who is only apparently female, but who is transformed over the course of the story, somehow becoming the symbolic 'voice' of an entire humanity." It is in this transformation that the show finds its strength, transcending reality to become metaphor.
In a secluded space like the Cortése, where the distance between stage and audience is almost completely eliminated, the story takes on a confessional tone. The audience is not simply a spectator but a participating party. Because the question that runs through "Lurdes" remains open and burning: what remains within us from those suspended months? And what loneliness continues to silently work its way to this day?
The show seems to want to explore solitude and personal transformation; it's not just about the pandemic, but becomes a metaphor for cramped homes, intense silences, and fraying relationships. The staging is intimate, and the audience is drawn in and almost forced to reflect.