How can “unsaid” words or ambiguous intonation lead to misunderstanding, irrevocably destroying a friendship? The play by Nathalie Sarraute, one of the most important French writers of the second half of the twentieth century, focuses on the power of words, in a web of incomparable skill. Two old friends meet after an unmotivated period of absence and examine the reasons for their separation. They thus discover that it was the silence between the words spoken, and above all the ambiguity of “intonation” that broke down their communication, as every single accent is open to multiple interpretations on the basis of the state of mind of the listener. For a yes or for a no is that nothingness that can change everything, that non-nothingness that causes profound cuts, wounds that cannot be healed. In its complexity, Sarraute’s prose is a trial for two “manipulators of words” like Franco Branciaroli and Umberto Orsini, who have returned to the stage after many years to apply their skills in bringing to life the terrible fight to the death that the play presents. This battle is directed by one of the undisputed masters of theatre, Pier Luigi Pizzi, who has returned to his timeless love of prose that is well noted among those who have most faithfully collaborated with the “Compagnia dei giovani” since the beginning.