La tragedia del vendicatore

English-born master in Shakespearean direction, Declan Donnellan, chose The Revenger’s tragedy by the Jacobean playwright Thomas Middleton as his first Italian production project. What we will see in the play is intrigue, corruption, lust, narcissism and hunger for power in the frame of a frighteningly contemporary seventeenth-century court. “Middleton and Shakespeare – explains Donnellan – made their careers in London when the city was undergoing a period of sensational change. It was the time of economic boom, a time dominated by social unease, which would finally erupt in a revolution and utterly destroy the cultural world of both playwrights. When reading Middleton, one perceives an impending threat, which grows like an invisible tumour and ends up exploding, fed by resentment and injustice. He tells us of corrupt governments embroiled in shady affairs, of people who are treated like they were merchandise. He describes a society obsessed with sex, fame, social standing and money, dominated by narcissism and a compulsive need for self-celebration in order to convince others – and above all itself – that it is good and fair”. “At that time – Donnellan continues – Italy was a forbidden place which very few English people had ever visited. Catholic Europe was, for the Protestant English, an elsewhere, just like Soviet Russia was when we were young. It was a potential invader, the bearer of harmful ideology”