Duration: one hour and 20 minutes without interval
In this new staging of one of his most successful plays, or rather one of the family treasures, as Orsini describes it, the actor is the star and the literary projection of Bernhard, who depicts himself as he describes to a silent listener the story of a singular friendship, a relationship between two lunatics.
The first is Bernhard himself, who has managed to dominate his madness, while the second is Paul Wittgenstein, the real or imaginary nephew of the famous philosopher Ludwig Wittgensen, who was overcome by his folly and who died in an asylum. Considered to be one of the Austrian author’s most beautiful novels, it is a kind of “concentration” of Bernhard’s themes, his most “intimate” work, as Patrick Guinard stresses, one in which he takes on the theme of feelings in the most direct manner, a theme which appears rarely in his works and which is the closest point to the words of Bernhard himself, to his human voice: the theme of the autobiography, which leads us into his country home-fortress and his literary world.
“I do not 'do Bernhard' - explains Orsini - who won the 2001 UBU Award for his performance - here I decided to 'be Bernhard', and therefore more than playing a historical figure, I am myself, speaking with the words of a great author, who will, in the end, overwhelm me, thus expressing himself”.
Piccolo Teatro Grassi
from 27 November to 22 December 2019
Il nipote di Wittgenstein
Storia di un’amicizia
by Thomas Bernhard
translated by Renata Colorni
adapted and directed by Patrick Guinand
sets Jean Bauer
with Umberto Orsini
and with Elisabetta Piccolomini
an Umberto Orsini Company production