Six Characters in Search of an Author by Pirandello has always been one of my favorite plays. I've only seen it once, the Richard Jones production in 2001 at the Young Vic. It was a great production! Basically, the play is rather haunting: six people arrive in a theatre for the rehearsals of a play. But they are characters for which the play has not been written yet (sound familiar?) They long to escape but can't until a writer completes their stories. I've always laughed that this is considered the second greatest play of the 20th Century, after Waiting for Godot.
Last night, I watched the Taviani brothers' movie, "Tu Ridi" (You laugh), well at least the first segment, "Felice" (Happy) that is based on Pirandello's Tu Ridi and Imbecile. It starts with a sad man, Felice played by Antonio Albanese enraging his wife because he laughs in his sleep all night long. Nothing is particularly funny in his life, while he is awake, in fact as a failed opera singer who's had to become an accountant, he is rather tragic. We watch his wife leave him, his best friend commit suicide, his failed attempt to confront one of the chief tormentors in his life. Towards the end of the film, our man Felice has one last hope at happiness and salvation: a brilliant and beautiful woman walks (literally) into his life and encourages him to sing again, from a beach stage (hello Fellini), but singing the lyrics about drowning himself in Rossini's L'italiana in Algeri signals a quick end minutes later, when Felice, not very felice in fact, walks into the sea.
Still more depressing was flipping over to watch 27 Dresses with Katherine Heigl. Give me a full plate of pasta, and let me get sick eating too much of it, any day.
