A great work, Sei personaggi, perhaps the best play of the 20thC, plus a couple I'm now reading. Bought this in 1997, in Milano stall near the just inside the Galleria, for $1.80, 3000 lire, economica indeed, Newton Economica Biblioteca (Newton & Compton: Roma, 1997). And a standard for great art: Think you've written really well? Did the audience fight for 20 minutes at the end, divided between hostility and admiration? That's what happened 10 Maggio '21, Teatro Valle di Roma. (Interesting that around then Italy won a gold medal in the 1920 Antwerp Olympics, but the Belgian band did not know the new Italian national anthem: they played O Sole Mio--and all the stands sang along. Unfortunately, the writer Capurro [?] had died a couple years earlier.)
The first reviewer said the issues of art vs life, and the nature of play-writing and performance are universal. It is also, of course, metadramatic, with the Son asseverating, "I am an undeveloped character."
The Capocomico (not really a "producer," but head of the troupe) treats the real lives of the people they stage as if they're invented--which brutalizes the "real" people.
As Molière tells about the task of writing comedy late in his Critique de L'Ecole des Femmes, Pirandello expresses his method late in Sei Personaggi in cerca d'autore. The Father reflects on literature's superiority to life; a character has a life, he is always "someone," but a man, un uomo:
"un personaggio ha veramente una vita sua, segnata di caretteri suoi, per cui è sempre 'qualcuno'. Mentre un uomo-- non dico lei, adesso-- un uomo cosi in genere, può non essere 'nessuno'"(71)
Moreover, all one's lived reality today may appear an illusion tomorrow.
The Father adds that the written character is an eternal reality, immutable, so terrible or thrilling for the Capocomico to approach. The Capocomico responds, But where have you ever seen a character step out of his part and explain the part, as you just have? "Quando mai s'è visto un personaggio che, uscendo dlla su parte, si sia messo a perorarla così come fa lei, e a proporla, a spegarla. Io non l'ho mai visto!"
Illusion, the question that ends it. Is the boy's death acted?
Third in the trilogy, "Questa sera si recita a soggetto,"* has introductions by the Capocomico, Doctor Hinkfuss (head of troupe, though translated as "Director") while the curtain is down, the actors arguing behind the curtain. Then the Director comes out and calls specific actors by their personal names, which they object to, dressed as they are for their parts; they call him by his offstage name. And they fight among themselves, the vain Leading Man objects to being corrected by the leading Actress, but she says he misses lines regularly. Still, that adds to spontaneity, which the Director urges.
Like Sei Personaggi, Questa Sera declares metadrama, makes the claim that a play cannot be judged from watching a performance--that is the result of the scene painter, the director, the costumes, etc. "Per giudicare il testo, bisognerebbe conoscerlo; e a teatro non si può"(138). Art is superior to life, has an eternal, undying form; and art takes revenge on life, the Capocomico says,
"L'arte vendica in un certo senso la vita perché, la sua, in tanto è vera creazione, in quanto è liberata dal tempo, dal tempo, dai casi e dagli ostacoli, senza altro fine che in se stessa"(139).
The "Director" gives full pages of instructions, but often concedes when his actors disagree, as at the end of Act II, just before the intermezzo, he says Enough, stop: "Basta! non eccedere!" Signora Ignazia, "But it gives me pleasure to continue..." Director, Okay, "Va bene..." Ignazia asks her daughters' stage partners where they're from--Venice, Milano--when she digresses on her own Naples, where I spent a couple summers. "Sono di Napoli, dico un paradiso...Chiaia! Philllipo! mi viene da piangere.." Near Chiaia is the huge Amphitheatre of Pozzuoli, and in fact a more ancient one, dug into the ground, not built above, and used for goats and sheep when I was there in '91, at Villa Vergilliana, Cuma. (Grazie Prof Jean D'Amato Thomas) Signora Ignazia avows everyone from the Naples region, as from Sicily, is born angry, arrabiata. (161. Comedian Gaffigan claims similar for the US Northeast, all annoyed.)
Mommina, the elder daughter, must be cast with a fine singing voice, because she sings the "Coro degli zingari," "Chi del gitano la vita abbella" what we call the Anvil Chorus from Il Trovatore (Act III, 169). She sings to cure her mom of the toothache, since Madame General's own singing Schubert, the Ave Maria, didn't succeed this time, though it worked long before, "gratia plena, Dominus tecum"(167).
As in Sei Personaggi, Pirandello again uses unexpected death at the end of this play, " è morto/morta."
*Unfortunately, no Dramatis Personae, so we don't learn Verri is a big man until Act III. Or that one of Ignazia's daughter's, Mommina, can really sing...say Verdi.