After that “Marat-Sade” nothing in the theatre in Messina was the same as beforeThe show, based on the text by Peter Weiss (brought to the cinema by Peter Brook), was set up fifty years ago in the Sala Laudamo by the Palermo director Beppe Randazzodied at age 79.
Visionary, demanding and a perfectionist like few others (and the author of internationally successful shows such as “Ubu Re” with actors dressed like a ball), Randazzo, under the aegis of the Teatro Struttura, then chaired by Pompeo Oliva and Magda Messina, in 1974 had gathered about thirty young people from Messina, many of them minors, in what today would be called a preparatory course for the actual show. Alongside them were a few professionals: in addition to the director-actor, Enzo Vetrano and Kadigia Bove (second wife of the politician Achille Occhetto). A meticulous and exhausting job, with very long days of rehearsals, always looking for something more, to add or take away.
The work takes place in the Charenton mental asylum, where de Sade was interned, and proposes a philosophical and political dispute between the Marquis and Marat. Around, controlled by the director, the patients who enter and exit the characters to propose their personal evidence of mental illness (I do not think it is a coincidence that two of those boys became psychiatrists and one psychologist). In Randazzo’s version the scenography (designed by Mino Bruneo, Massimo Lo Curzio and Pucci Sorrenti, built by the Zappia blacksmiths) included lateral cages that ran from the stage along the entire Laudamo room and, once the entrance door was closed, it was really difficult to establish whether the actors-patients or the spectators-perhaps healthy-were locked up, in a growing intensity of strong emotions.
The process was difficult, the premiere was continually postponed because Randazzo was tormented by new ideas. The debut was finally on January 8, 1975, but there was a risk that everything would go up in smoke due to a very heated afternoon clash between Magda Messina and the director. It could have been the end, but instead everything worked perfectly and the success, at the premiere as in the reruns, in the face of a staging that overturned everything that had been seen up to that point in Messina (and not only), was total.
Of that group of debutants, many continued their artistic careers with flattering successes: Raffaella D’Avella, Antonio Lo Presti, the twins Ester and Maria Cucinotti, Amy Pollicino (writer, daughter-in-law of Claudia Cardinale), Alberto Simone (director, son-in-law of Nino Manfredi), Donatella Venuti, Brunella Macchiarella. Bianca Stancanelli also acted, who later became a well-known journalist. In the group there was Donatella Maiorca, destined for a career as a director.
The music was entrusted to Beniamino Ginatempo, Giancarlo Parisi and Pino Patti. The additional news comes to us from Antonio Lo Presti: «Nobody wrote it, perhaps because it was added to work in progress, but the director of the asylum was played by the poet, playwright and actor from Palermo Franco Scaldati». And he adds: «Randazzo did a wonderful job on behavior, on the border between normality and madness. An unforgettable master who left us a lot».
And we will miss him.