Gareth's Culture and Travel Blog

You’ll be forgiven for not being interested in my opinion of this late viewing (it closes today, and my originally scheduled visit was three months ago), but I will give it anyway.

It’s set in Italy in the early 20th century, but director Richard Eyre has populated it with Irish actors speaking in their native accents. I did speculate that the NT may have received a grant from the Irish government (who’ve got form influencing corporate decisions), but in the end accepted that it’s intention is to provide an early 21st century surrogate we can identify with – though the period, character names and location haven’t changed.

I’m fond of the work of Luigi Pirandello, albeit based on just five plays, the most famous (and fascinating) of which is Six Characters in Search of an Author, which was way ahead of its time. He may have been the first playwright to play with form, though this early play (in a new version by Tanya Ronder, wife of NT director designate Rufus Norris) seems very conventional and, frankly, a bit dull.

Liola is one of two adult male characters whose significance doesn’t seem to justify being the title of the play. He has fathered (at least) three children by three different women, but has taken responsibility for raising them (well, his mother Ninfa has) so he’s a sympathetic character rather than a rake. The other man is Simone, a 65-year old landowner desperate to father a child by his second, much younger, wife Mita. There’s much talk about this, plus speculation about the father of pregnant local girl Tuzza’s child, with fingers pointed at the man who has form. That’s about it really. Women gossiping.

To hammer home the charming, wistful surrogate environment, we have lots of music (Orlando Gough) and a fair bit of dancing, though the whitewashed walls and olive tree of the village square of Anthony Ward’s set belong in Italy. Three young boys (Liola’s sons) spend a lot of time climbing and sitting in the tree which I found a bit distracting in a rare concern for the health & safety of young actors.

The performances are uniformly good, particularly from James Hayes and Rosaleen Linehan. I didn’t dislike it, but it didn’t have me skipping back to Waterloo station; much of a muchness.