You won’t be laughing when it’s over
Napoli Milionaria!
(out of 4) Written by Eduardo De Filippo. Translated by John Murrell from a literal translation by Donato Santeramo. Directed by Antoni Cimolino. Until Oct. 27 at the Avon Theatre, 99 Downie St. StratfordFestival.ca or 1-800-5671600.
For the final opening at the Stratford Festival in 2018, artistic director Antoni Cimolino is going back — back to the first playwright he directed on his own at the festival, and back to his roots in Italy. Eduardo De Filippo’s play Na
poli Millionaria!, written in the midst of Italy’s divide between Allied and German control during the Second World War and published in1945, is an example in earnestness and sentiment. Cimolino’s production leans into its morality tale, telling the story of Iovine family patriarch Gennaro (Tom McCamus) who is conscripted to serve, and comes home to a family and community corrupted by black market deals, shallow values and selfishness.
Cimolino evidently wants to introduce Canadian audiences to this writer, not performed at the festival since 1997, but cherished in Italy and, as the program points out, known simply as “Eduardo” by the current residents of Naples. A new translation by Canadian playwright John Murrell smooths over the Neapolitan dialect in which it was written into an accessible style, perhaps turning the dialogue into a more formal exercise than its source material would convey to its original audience. The program offers some necessary contextual material — a timeline of Italy’s in- volvement of the war, an explanation of Mussolini’s arrest and release by Germany which split the country into separate areas of military control, and a glimpse into the conditions that inspired De Filippo to write this play. It does help give shape to this familial tragicomedy — which starts leaning heavily on laughs and finishes in sombre devastation — and yet there seems to be an impenetrable divide between action and audience.
De Filippo’s message, delivered with admiration by Cimolino’s production, is that war unleashes both external and internal horrors — it destroys homes and bodies, but also character and integrity. Fear and scarcity turns human beings against each other out of survival, which can easily slide into greed. Sure, no one’s arguing with that.
But locating the story entirely within the Iovine family home, it also virtually eliminates the context that drives the characters to their supposed moral depravity, primarily that of Gennaro’s wife Amalia (Brigit Wilson), who through her connection with Errico (Michael Blake) sources black-market food for her neighbours — for a marked-up price. Gennaro, a First World War veteran, disapproves but doesn’t intervene. While he is home, such tricks are laughable — and in the case of Gennaro’s devotion to playing dead for Brigadiere Ciappa (André Sills), even as bombs fall near the house, noble. But when Gennaro disappears while fighting the current war, that’s when De Filippo imagines the world loses its course.
Amalia and Errico’s business has taken off, as has their personal relationship, Gennaro’s son Amadeo (Johnathan Sousa) has begun his own seedy partnership, and daughter Maria Rosaria (Shruti Kothari) spends her evenings out with her friends, cavorting with Allied soldiers, and you know where that always leads. The third act punishes the Iovine’s obsession with money and power, taking place a day after Gennaro’s surprise return, and all of the humour in the family’s exploits is sucked out, with a few men (a doctor, Gennaro, Ciappa and Amalia’s former client played electrically by Tom Rooney) to point to the errors in their behaviour.
Julie Fox’s realistic set and 1940s costumes follow this journey from humble to lavish to morose, but it’s not an accident that the action takes place exclusively in the home — the place that either saves or destroys a family. It’s also the feminine domain — the opening scene demonstrates just how much orchestration by Amalia and Maria it takes to run a household, especially in wartime, as McCamus unspools Gennaro’s long-winded political rants and moral lessons (McCamus has seemingly found a perfect home for his particular knack for verbose, high-thinking men, but he also sometimes descends into mumbles). These women are trying to make a living for their families in an impossible situation. Writing in the thick of the war, De Filippo might not have felt pressured to lay out the details of the situation that would motivate these characters, but in Canada in 2018, it feels as if they need to shoulder the blame of their mistakes on their own, and the vast majority of that blame falls on the women, particularly Amalia.
Wilson also follows the play’s trajectory with her role, beginning with full gusto and crumbling internally throughout the rest of the production, wracked with guilt over her job, her family and the pleasure that she gets from the luxury she lives with. On the verge of shattering in the final scene, as Gennaro wonders out loud “What am I supposed to do now?” looking at his deceitful wife, ruined daughter and virtuous son, it took some energy not to run up on stage and hug the woman, and tell her that she did her best.
This Stratford season looks at the implications of the pursuit of freedom, and the black-andwhite morality of Napoli Millionaria! feels like an unexpected tone to close on, especially since its marketing places it squarely in the realm of comedy. Cimolino delivers a loving testament to a beloved Italian writer who is relatively unknown in Canada — if only he had saved some of that empathy for all of Eduardo De Filippo’s characters.