WORLD WORLDWIDE EUROPE ITALY - news journal UPDATE - (en) Italy, Umanita Nova #7-25 - A screen that is us - The revival of Cinema Cielo by Danio Manfredini (ca, de, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

 It is necessary to take stock of something that does not happen so often

in the life of a simple theater enthusiast like me, when he finds
himself sitting on the seats of Italian theaters for about half a
century now, if his memory does not err: I am talking about going back
to see, for the third time, a show by an important Italian actor and
author, the revival of a piece of history of our contemporary theater,
Cinema Cielo by and with Danio Manfredini. A show that won the Ubu prize
way back in 2004, which I saw in its first appearance, after the preview
at the Santarcangelo festival in 2003, when it was presented in that
theater season at the then Elfo in Milan, now Teatro Menotti.

The impression at the time was devastating, and not just for me: I
remember very well the dozens of minutes of thunderous applause from
spectators who for the most part - including me - had tears in their
eyes, with Danio and the other three actors forced to return to the
stage I don't know how many times, but the ovation lasted at least three
quarters of an hour, because no one decided to leave, to stop
applauding. The show, obviously, has not remained exactly the same as it
was back then, nor has its impact remained the same as it was twenty
years ago, because times have changed, there have been different careers
and different adventures for the four protagonists, but ultimately it
has lost very little of its poetic, acting, sound and writing depth,
even for a spectator who has lived through all the years that have
passed during its mutation like me. I spoke of a sound level, because,
together with the visual and acting performance levels, in this show you
cannot overshadow the soundtrack, taken directly from the original show
of Sant' Arcangelo, which has not undergone any changes, even in my
vision a few days ago in Sarzana, in the tour that is now underway,
which will also bring it back to the room where I saw it for the first time.

In Cinema Cielo the spectator finds on stage the room of the homonymous
real historical red-light cinema in Milan, once located in Viale
Premuda: he finds himself in front of the seats, some occupied by
mannequins, crossed by various characters who live their extreme
existence in search of sexual pleasure, of a refuge from external life,
of an illusion of love, while a film runs on the screen that however is
also us, sitting there in the stalls observing them, like voyeurs
observed by the characters who look towards us; a hallucinatory
microcosm, but desperately poetic. In addition to seeing, we can hear
the sound of various voices off-screen that belong to this story, plus
the soundtrack of an imaginary film that the characters watch and that
follows the plot of Notre Dame de Fleurs by Jean Genet, a text from
which Danio several years later Cinema Cielo also drew a beautiful
reading enlivened by the vision of his drawings; among other things,
this show, now, ends with the vision of a drawing by Danio that appears
on the curtain at the end, where the photo of the real Cinema Cielo is
seen at the beginning. However, there is a difference between the
adventures of Divine in Genet's novel, and those of the transvestite
missionary of love, played by Danio on stage who moves with his little
wings on high heels.

Divine, Notre Dame de Fleurs, their friends continue their life outside
the normal patterns until the final tragedy and this other world is
transcended by Genet as an example of a new and superhuman morality,
while the series of events shown in Danio's show does not reach this
dimension of exaltation, but drags all the characters into a sort of
ecstasy of human understanding that, paradoxically, has almost something
mystical, especially in the sexual adventures of the transvestite,
narrated however in his dialogue directly with Jesus, who also appears
(on the cross) towards the end: a Jesus of the periphery, a Jesus of the
last who - says this character - does not have enough strength to carry
us all in his arms, therefore no longer has the strength to save us.

So how was the experience of me as a spectator at the third viewing of
the show, which I found with the actors, with another self, through the
decades, after having carried it inside me with the intensity of memory,
but also with the gaze changed with the changing of the bodies put on
stage, the real ones of the actors, those of the mannequins, those
evoked by the voices of Genet's narration, a text that the spectator-me
also read and loved (a lot) in his distant youth?

And it is here that the success of this reprise is consumed, in the
doling out of new emotions, perhaps less shocking, but equally poetic,
equally intense and more mature, welcomed in a new vision in which the
spectator looks at this sample of humanity and is almost allegorically
observed by it and by the wise staging of Manfredini, as well as by his
and the other actors' anti-naturalistic acting, spread in the words, in
the gestures of the walk of the characters of the "angelic" protagonist
and of other figures who peripatetically walk through the corridors of
the Cinema Cielo, as in a hallucinatory procession, immersed in a
picture of light, sounds and songs that leave their mark. When this
music thins out, the applause dies down, the spectator goes home, in the
rain, having locked inside himself another emotion and another dose of
the poetry of the theater of the Great Danio Manfredini.

Falco Ranuli

https://umanitanova.org/uno-schermo-che-siamo-noi/
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