Toni Servillo / Piccolo Teatro di Milano - Teatro d’Europa and Teatri Uniti di Napoli
www.piccoloteatro.org and www.teatriuniti.it
| A piece based on the text: | Elvire Jouvet 40, by Brigitte Jaques |
| Translation: | Giuseppe Montesano |
| Director: | Toni Servillo |
| Costume: | Ortensia De Francesco |
| Lighting: | Pasquale Mari |
| Sound: | Daghi Rondanini |
| Assistant director: | Costanza Boccardi |
| Starring: | Toni Servillo, Petra Valentini, Francesco Marino and Davide Cirri |
| A coproduction by: | Piccolo Teatro di Milano - Teatro d’Europa and Teatri Uniti di Napoli |
| The international activity of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano - Teatro d'Europa enjoys the support of: | Eni |
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“Servillo is a quintessentially Italian actor. His production is lively and heavily involves the audience. Elvira shows in a unique way how art and life combine to reveal the being”.Le Monde
After years of focussing on shows that recreated the best of the Italian theatre tradition, from Carlo Goldoni to Eduardo De Filippo, Toni Servillo returns to the Autumn to Spring Festival to star in and direct a play about the ultimate condition of the actor, their way he works in the theatre, his technique, his values, and the day to day relations he establishes with the world beyond the edge of the stage.
We're talking about Elvira, a text that starts with a real experience of the job - acting lessons for the creation of the character of Doña Elvira from Molière's Don Juan in Paris during the Nazi occupation - which French actress and director Brigitte Jaques adapted to a play in the 1980s to explain the intense creative relationship between the celebrated master Louis Jouvet and the young apprentice actress Claudia, based on Paula Dehelly. A journey that begins with an artistic and formative lesson focussed on a specific moment: Elvira's farewell to her old lover and arising from a dialectical combat around man and his inherent contradictions. "Over the years, Louis Jouvet's reflections on the theatre and the work of the actor have served me well when taking on different repertoires, from Molière to Marivaux and from De Filippo to Goldoni. It seemed to me that the time had come for a direct encounter with him," explains Servillo. “I find the reflections of Jouvet particularly relevant when explaining the noble art of acting to the young, which seems to have been devalued in these confusing times”.
Elvira transports the audience inside a closed theatre so that they can spy on a master and his student in the particular moment of creation of a character. It's theatre within the theatre, and after its premiere in the Piccolo Teatro di Milano it has been earning rave reviews. In fact, it's worth mentioning the great reception the play received during its stint in Paris at the Théatre de l’Athénée Louis Jouvet in 2017.