According to an ancient legend, during the night of Sant’Antonio, animals are given the ability to talk to humans. This ability comes with a price; whoever listens to them will be cursed with bad luck and damnation. This is how Innocente Crescento is forced to relive the terrible story of his family, told by La cupa, the play hailed by the newspaper la Repubblica as an “absolute masterpiece that has changed the history of theatre”. A visionary piece of writing in fifteen-thousand verses in powerful and enchanting Neapolitan; an allegoric poem that resounds with echoes of Basile and Shakespeare, and flashes of Nō theatre and Greek tragedy; an ancient yet highly contemporary story of feuds, betrayal, amputation, oppression and violence.
“The plot - explains Mimmo Borrelli, here fulfilling the triple role of writer, director and actor - takes the form of a fictional and troubled other world, with the clashing of planets seeped in a saga of errors buried in ravines, geological strata, anecdotes and cavities, with the contours of memory blurred and smoothed by the years, ill winds and eras of misdeeds and original sin. A true saga, buried deep in the heart, a good and generous time, of its opposing character Giosafatte ’Nzamamorte, a good, true man with a disturbing, undeciphered, troubled and demented past”.