In front of a curtain full of sequins, two smiling and nice presenters, him in a tuxedo, her, a blondasse in a long and silvery evening dress, under dazzling lights, have two choirs that tune the national anthem. This is how "a show where no one loses" begins, as the two presenters euphoricly incite, "a show where you are us and we are you". The climate is that of the variety of Saturday night television, or if you want a mega-karaoke with the choruses that incite with the successes of Mina, Battisti, Eros Ramazzotti, Renato Zero and the public with them. "Singing is like making love, but nothing #me-too, huh?", screams at the microphone smiling the show-girl, between You I love Umberto Tozzi and Maybe because I love you of the Rich and Poor, between a pistol on how nice it is to have fun all together and a connection with Germany where in a dance hall other people sing, in an atmosphere gradually more and more tacky and delirious. But also violent, because soon from that joyful repertoire of songs emerge much more bitter contradictions.
The national song is the new show of the Dutch collective Wunderbaum, an international co-production with the Milanese association Mare Culturale urbano, Theater Rotterdam and Theaterhaus Jena, at the Spirit de Milan on the 18th in preview and until the 20th, according to the usual modalities of the group, a bit like a rave climate, a bit like a participatory theatre, a bit like an informal relationship between audience and stage. After the success of Who is the real Italian?, seen at the Romaeuropa Festival, where a group of inhabitants of zone 7 of Milan made a "real" meeting of condominium, this time within a four-year project, the Wunderbaum are dedicated to the concept of "gated communities" and, working between Holland, Germany and Italy with different communities, intend to explore concepts such as identity, roots, national pride, xenophobia. "And what could be more identitary and, if you like, political than popular song," says Marleen Scholten, director of the group, on stage with Alessandro Riceci and the choristers and choristers from the Sankofa Gospel Ensemble, the Choir of the Università degli Studi di Milano Bicocca, and the Sforza Polyphonic Choir. "The song concerns everyone, unites, is collective memory, and a heritage of national identity because the Italian songs are different from those of a German or a Dutch, become a patriotic recognition.
So much so that while everyone on stage, public and choristers, is singing from Va' pensiero to Bella ciao, from Azzurro to Il cielo è sempre più blu (there is even an irresistible medley that traces fifty years of melodies of Italian song accompanied by a mini orchestra), a young man, perhaps Pakistani, stands aside, embarrassed and silent, unable to share that heritage. So: stranger, foreigner, expelled from the group. "Those who do not know that music and that language, those who cannot share the same culture with others, are not recognized. It takes on another status. This is how we get to phenomena like xenophobia", explains Marleen who, as often happens in the works of Wunderbaum (in the future they will work on the repentant voters of Germany, Italy and Holland), laughing and joking, illuminates the darkest sides and the most controversial aspects of our social relations and humorously discovers bitter aspects of civil coexistence and invites us to reflect on it. The show, after the Italian debut, will have in the following months two new productions in Germany and Holland, with choristers, songs and reactions of the place.