In 1985, in Turin, a maxi-trial against the Catania mafia took place. It lasted for almost two years. Among the accused was Salvatore, who although he was little more than a boy, had already left a trail of murders and criminal deeds: he was sentenced to life. A rapport of mutual respect, almost of trust, formed between him and the president of the Court of Assizes. The day after sentencing, on impulse, the judge wrote to him and sent a book to him in prison. It was the beginning of an exchange of correspondence that was destined to last for twenty-six years, during which time each of them lived their own lives: the judge following a career as magistrate and politician, until retirement, always questioning the sense of prison as a punishment; the prisoner, between the highs and lows of prison life, the hopes for rehabilitation and the suffering of the 41-bis restricted prison regime, a path of cultural emancipation - also thanks to the judge - and an attempted suicide.
Mauro Avogadro stages the stage-play that the writer Paolo Giordano based on Fine pena: ora, written by Elvio Fassone, one of the two protagonists - the judge - of the story. “What is fascinating about this work - explains Avogadro - is the complicity that forms between two people who are so different, both culturally and geographically, an upper-class man who “naturally” becomes a judge, and an underproletarian, from a area at risk, who just as “naturally” becomes part of the mafia. They are two extraordinary people who manage to become characters thanks to the work of two great actors. Alongside the exploration of very different forms of humanity is the pressing question on the sense of the punishment: can prison ever lead to rehabilitation? What are the dynamics within a prison that can improve or worsen the condition of a person? It is a sense of humanity which is generated by the situations and characters: one senses that the words that are written and spoken are living entities, placed in an emotional suspension that is created, in an epistolary relationship, between the sending of a letter and the wait for an answer”.