Franco Cordelli, But is it Hitler or the Wizard of Oz?

Luigi de Angelis, the director of the theatre group Fanny & Alexander, works with series of plays dedicated at one theme. After numerous plays dedicated to “Ada”of Nabokov, and after Heliogabalus, now we see Him, the first of a new group of plays for The wizard of Oz, or better for her heroine, the maiden Dorothy. There is in all this an extraordinary, obsessive, nearly diseased continuity. The archetypal character could be Alice of Lewis Carrol. With Ada the theme of androigynia becomes explicit. This theme reappears in the Heliogabalus of Artaud, with connotations of ambiguity not really faded. Even in a recent play dedicated to Landolfi is present the same theme, based on the figure of the “nippies”, the simulacrum.

In Him the surprise is extreme. Last week I have defined in the best way Molly Sweeney, the play that the director De Rosa derives from the comedy of Brian Friel: in this play a linguistic stratum overlapped the other, obviously modifying it. But were languages placed in a vertical way. In Him, as is nearly simple what we see, as is complex, whirling, asymmetrical the drift to arrive at the form of which we are spectators. On the wall at the end we can see “The Wizard of Oz” of Victor Fleming. On the empty scene there is just one actor, on his knees, that is Marco Cavalcoli. In front of him, on the ground, there is a little computer (I believe is a computer on which appear the images of the film synchronized with the images that the spectators see). Cavalcoli wheels the baton of a conductor.

But remarkable is that Cavalcoli, Him, is none other that Hitler. The brown suit, the shirt of the colour of the ground, the brown tie, the moustache and the straight hair that fall on his forehead identify him clearly. The mind goes immediately at one image similar or identical of Maurizio Cattelan. Of this Hitler, named Him, there are two or three copies. One of these is at the Castle of Rivoli. It’s a statue, of natural size, in fibreglass, with a fake skin for the face and the hands. The dress is the same, or nearly the same of that of Cavalcoli.

The only difference between these two simulacrum is that the one of Cattelan wants that we look at him, while the one of the play watches us, or better he does one thing, he directs an imaginary orchestra, in other terms he isn’t just a tool, he is an actor.

The excellence of the play doesn’t consist only in the bare upset, ironical and amused, of the humour of Cattelan, his ghoulish humour. Here we are in front of a critical interpretation of the text that comes from the world of the visual arts and in a vertiginous blending of the languages, of the film of Fleming. There isn’t only Cattelan. There is also, or first of all, the wizard of Oz,  that famous charlatan for children, for the children that we all are.

And who is, in the language of Fanny and Alexander, the charlatan prince , that childish and stupid  wizard ,if not Hitler, Him? Is absent every reduction of the criminal at a burlesque character, this Hitler that is countered to the purity of Dorothy (his Heliogabalus) isn’t anymore a Hitler, but the artificer of an extraordinary proof, who is Marco Cavalcoli.

With a lot of excesses the actor reduce the strength of his character. He is a wizard in any case, he direct the play - of the desire of home and of the escape from it, both the criminal desire and of the penitence (on his knees) - also with the voice: in the original English version of the film, all the voices are his voice. The real home, he says, is what we do when we are adults, when, as Dorothy, we are homeless.

(translation by Elizabeth Annable)

HIM home

Theatre Performances

AMORE (2 atti) | Dorothy | Vaniada | Aqua Marina | Ardis II | Ardis I