Duration: one hour and 45 minutes without interval
Following the success of Ragazzi di vita by Pier Paolo Pasolini, Massimo Popolizio returns to the Piccolo with a very contemporary work - Henrik Ibsen’s An enemy of the people - setting it not in 1882 Norway, but in an imaginary American county in the 1920s. Here, a spa has been built, which represents an opportunity for the recovery of the area, offering work to the people of an economically depressed country. But political and moral conflict emerges, placing two brothers against each other, the doctor Thomas Stockmann, played by Popolizio, who is the director of the spa, and the mayor Peter Stockmann (Maria Paiato playing a male role). Thomas discovers that the spa waters are causing pollution, while Peter, a political whitewasher, tries in vain to convince him that his disclosure would bring an end to their collective dreams of well-being. The story is entrusted to the characters who populate this provincial town, where everyone knows everyone else and everyone seems to live in apparent harmony, a harmony, however, which is about to be irredeemably “polluted”, just like the waters on which its economy and prosperity is based.
A play on the search for truth and the consent of both the people and the press. A work which makes no reference to current affairs, yet which examines its mechanisms with a lucid and ruthless gaze.
A play which forms part of the artistic project “PROGETTO IBSEN - I pilastri della drammaturgia contemporanea (IBSEN PROJECT - The pillars of contemporary drama)” involving: Teatro di Roma, Teatro della Toscana, Teatro Stabile di Napoli, Teatro Nazionale di Genova with the works “An Enemy of the People - John Gabriel Borkman – The Master Builder”.
Piccolo Teatro Strehler
from 28 January to 16 February 2020
Un nemico del popolo
by Henrik Ibsen, translated by Luigi Squarzina
directed by Massimo Popolizio
with Massimo Popolizio and Maria Paiato
and with Tommaso Cardarelli, Francesca Ciocchetti, Martin Chishimba, Maria Laila Fernandez, Paolo Musio, Michele Nani, Francesco Bolo Rossini
and with Flavio Francucci, Cosimo Frascella, Duilio Paciello, Francesco Santagada, Gabriele Zecchiaroli
sets Marco Rossi, costumes Gianluca Sbicca, lighting Luigi Biondi
sound Maurizio Capitini, video Lorenzo Bruno and Igor Renzetti
a Teatro di Roma - Teatro Nazionale production
