It is not the first time that Lorenzo Gleijeses meets Eugenio Barba, the founder and director of the legendary Odin Teatret, an international group and master who have marked the history of theatre in the last half century. But this time the meeting gave rise to an exciting show outside the choir that is also the first direction of Barba "outside" the Odin, that is, not with actors from his company.
The show is called Una giornata qualunque by the dancer Gregorio Samsa and is currently shooting, after a stop in Milan at the Teatro dell'Arte-Triennale in Milan. It is also interesting because Lorenzo Gleijeses, son of art, school in "official" prose theatre, linked to the Neapolitan tradition (his father is the actor and director Geppy Glejieses with whom he has acted several times), is an interpreter who has often woven these roots with those of other theatres, more attentive to new languages. This show, for example, is the result of an artistic sedimentation where we find the collaboration with Michele Di Stefano of Mk, with Chiara Lagani (consultant for dramaturgy) of Fanny and Alexander, with Julia Varley actress of the Odin who had followed Lorenzo in other shows (and here co-director), and, from the production point of view, with Teatro Piemonte Europa directed by Valter Malosti, the Odin and Gitiesse which is the production of his father.
In short, a mixture of different poetics and theatrical cultures quite original and unpublished.
And not unrelated to the theme of the show, which starts with a very clear and precise suggestion of Kafka's Metafmorphosis where the employee Gregor Samsa wakes up one morning in his room with the body of a cockroach. Here the protagonist is Gregorio, a young artist who is working with a "Master" to make a show. You can immediately understand the inner torment of the young dancer, to meet the demands of the master and also to feel "free" in what he does. Free as an artist and as a man, because once home, we discover that Gregory has a girlfriend who besieges him, as does the father figure, also an artist. The search for an inner "freedom" pushes Gregorio to isolation, to a transformation, perhaps madness or perhaps really to catch what he is looking for. All this is not narrated verbally, except for short broken sentences, some recorded (there is also the voice of Barba who is the teacher, Giulia Varley who is a psychoanalyst, Geppy Gleijeses who does himself, ie the father) but shown through the obsessive and constant repetition of choreographic movements that imperceptibly and hand hand change, letting the transformation of Gregorio into an insect shine through in an increasingly visible way.
The physical score that Lorenzo Gleijeses has built in the enclosure of a small square white space, is surprising for its expressiveness and energy, and confirms the mastery of the body language of this actor, very special. The collaboration with two fundamental figures is strong on the show: Barba has been mentioned. The great director of the Odin accompanied Lorenzo in the construction of a physical language that gave account of the myriad of images, including symbolic ones, of the story; he accompanied him, as the director himself explains in the programme, in a double betrayal, of Lorenzo towards his roots and of Barba towards his group. But the other fundamental figure is Mirto Baliani, a great talent for sound and light, who here has created a real unreal but very concrete environment. Two things alone do not convince: sometimes the physical language is too insistent and protracted, including the ending which would benefit a more drastic but clear cut. Also because, and this is the second point, on the overall perfection of the work, weighs a certain slow coldness, an emotional freezing. Definitely Kafkaesque, but maybe too much.
