Reviewed by James Karas
Saturday, Sunday, Monday is a lovely play by Eduardo De Filippo that has been adapted by Antoni Cimolino and Donato Santeramo for this year’s Stratford Festival program. It is about an extended Napolitan family preparing for a dinner on Saturday, eating and arguing on Saturday and coming to terms with some outrageous conduct on Monday.
The new English version was commissioned by the Festival and it is directed by Cimolino, the outgoing Artistic Director and it is his last directorial job nicely complemented by his task as co-adapter. He has assembled an all-star cast and Thalia, the Muse of comedy, smiled on him and the production. Dionysus may have helped but the god of the theatre was a violent sort and I prefer the gentle Thalia.
It is Saturday in Naples in 1959 and Rosa, (Rose Napoli) the matriarch of the Priore family is preparing dinner for about a dozen people on Sunday. She runs the kitchen like boot camp and when the maid Virgina (Jenna-Lee Hyde) suggests that she has peeled enough onions for the ragu, the retort comes in. Are you going to teach me how to make ragu. Virgina has a slightly unhinged brother, Michele (Liam Tobin) who has some violent tendencies and she asks for a day off to look after him. Rosa’s answer is NO!
There is palpable tension between Rosa and her husband Peppino (Graham Abbey) and it will explode on Sunday. Let’s get a sense of the family. Rosa and Peppino have three children. Roberto (Jakob Ehman) who is married to Maria Carolina (Celia Aloma), Rocco (Emilio Viera) and Giulianella (Katarina Fiallos) who is engaged to Federico (Maher Sinno).
Antonio Piscopo (Rod Beattie) is Rosa’s father and the oldest dinner guest. Peppino has a brother Raffaele (Geraint Wyn Davies) and a sister Amelia “Meme” (Seana McKenna) who in turn has a son Attlio (Josue Laboucane).
We are close to getting a complete inventory. The neighbor Luigi (Gordon S. Miller) becomes a key participant in the dinner because Peppino suspects him of having an affair with Rosa, his wife Elena (Michelle Giroux) is with him and we have short visits by the Catiello the tailor (David Collins) and Cefercola the doctor (Michael Wamara).
That is a lot of people but they add to the drama and comedy of the play and deserve to be mentioned and appreciated.
The humour, gentle, rough, aggressive, on Sunday it breaks off completely when Peppino accuses the accountant Luigi of having an affair with Rosa. There is an outburst of emotional and an outpouring of hidden pain that are simply extraordinary. There is competition among them, there are family differences and arguments but there is also love and family pride.
The play touches on social issues such as the place of women in Italian society. The self-assured and self-educated Amelia of Seana McKenna castigates her brother Peppino for his sloppy language. He writes heart without an “e” she tells him and she advises Giulianella to apply for a job as an announcer at a television station. Frederico objects and she calls him an idiot.
Napoli and Abbey deliver superb performances as Rosa and Peppino, the warring couple. There may be many reasons for their fighting but it may be a mid-marriage crisis that boils over. De Filippo finds atonement and reconciliation for them.
Rod Beattie shuffles across the stage with a walker that I am not sure is part of the script. His performance is steady but Walt of Wingfield Farm is capable of much more. Seana McKenna is at her usual best and the cast is superb.
The humour is like a pot of water on the stove. It gets warm and then it starts slowly to bubble until it comes to a full boil or to a comedic crescendo in the play. It boils over in the second act in an extraordinary dramatic scene. The third act is saved for accountability, atonement, reconciliation and a satisfactory exit.
Douglas Paraschuk’s sets of the kitchen, the dining room and the Priore house of a successful family in 1950’s Naples look excellent as does Michael Walton’s lighting.
Notably this is Antoni Cimolino’s first collaboration as an adapter of a play and his last job as a director on the eve of his departure as the Artistic Director of The Stratford Festival. I salute him warmly for his achievements, including 39 years at the Stratford Festival and his accomplishments around the world.
________________________
Saturday, Sunday, Monday by Eduardo De Filippo, adapted by Antoni Cimolino and Donato Santeramo continues in repertory at the Stratford Festival until October 24, 2026, at the Avon Theatre, 99 Downie St. Stratford, Ont. www.stratfordfestival.ca/
No comments:
Post a Comment