Stein’s Pinter and a tribute to Gaber for Sala Umberto season

After an “intense and resistant” season that has just ended, the curtain of the Sala Umberto in Rome will reopen at the end of September “with the awareness of the narrow escape”, to continue “to give the signal that we are alive, despite the fact that nothing seems to go towards the theater “. With these reflections, the artistic director of the Sala Umberto in Rome, Alessandro Longobardi, illustrates the dense billboard that will see 17 companies on stage, which will probably go up to 19 in total, from 27 September to 7 May, with a flagship absolute: directed by Peter Stein for ‘The birthday’ by Harold Pinter, starring Maddalena Crippa. But it is a bill of strong names that proposed to its audience by the Umberto Room, relying on Alessandro Gassmann for the direction of ‘Someone flew over the cuckoo’s nest’; the duo made up of Mariano Rigillo and Giorgio Colangeli for ‘The two Popes’ who obviously are Ratzinger still Benedict XVI, ‘in office’ and Bergoglio then cardinal and not yet Pope Francis. And then Peppe Barra with an unpublished version of the ‘Cantata dei pastori’; or the couple formed by Vittoria Belvedere and Enzo Iacchetti for ‘Bloccati dalla neve’; and again Cochi Ponzoni for ‘The wounds of the wind’, Gioele Dix for ‘The race behind the wind’ based on the texts by Dino Buzzati, Gianmarco Tognazzi in ‘The honest ghost’ by Edoardo Erba. Andrea Mirò to Giorgio Gaber and Sandro Luporini and their song-theater with ‘Far pretending to be healthy’ in collaboration with the Gaber foundation; and for Giampiero Ingrassia in search of eternal youth, in the role of ‘Doctor Faust’. The opening show of the new season will be ‘Immaculate Conception’ by and with Federica Carruba Toscano. After ‘What are these money for’, Armando Curcio’s classic Neapolitan tradition, Giovanni Scifoni and Francesca Inaudi arrive with ‘Beginning: the love you don’t expect’. And for lovers of great classical authors, the Russian atmosphere of Anton Cechov’s ‘Cherry Garden’ with Milvia Marigliano. “We are alive – underlines the director Longobardi – and we have the duty, as well as the need, to prove it”. (By Enzo Bonaiuto)