Leonardo Lidi's The Cherry Orchard debuts at the Festival dei Due Mondi
The theatre of the second weekend of the Festival dei Due Mondi is entirely dedicated to Anton Chekhov, with the third stage of the journey undertaken in the last three years by director Leonardo Lidi. After Il gabbiano and Zio Vanja, from 4 to 7 July at the Teatro Caio Melisso Spazio Carla Fendi, The Cherry Orchard, the last stage of the Trilogy dedicated to Chekhov, presented in its entirety on Sunday 7 July in a theatrical marathon. Leonardo Lidi is backto Spoleto after receiving the 2024 Flaiano Award for Best Director with the show Zio Vanja, staged at the Festival dei Due Mondi in 2023. Il giardino dei ciliegi is produced by the Teatro Stabile dell'Umbria in co-production with the Teatro Stabile di Torino – Teatro Nazionale and the Festival dei Due Mondi. On stage, the same actors that the audience has learned are on stage to in the first two chapters of the trilogy (in alphabetical order): Giordano Agrusta, Maurizio Cardillo, Alfonso De Vreese, Ilaria Falini, Christian La Rosa, Francesca Mazza, Angela Malfitano, Orietta Notari, Mario Pirrello, Tino Rossi, Massimiliano Speziani, Giuliana Vigogna.
From the director's notes: "What a great Chekhov! How beautiful The Cherry Orchard! That cannot be pigeonholed, that cannot be done in any way except in the most difficult one, which requires a radical belief in the creative act. The request to nobility of soul, to generosity as the greatest form of art. A place, a garden/theatre, which had found its usefulness a hundred years ago and which now lives only in the memory of its performers. Which now no longer produces the jam that our grandparents were so fond of and that for this reason can be safely thrown down in favor of a parking lot. "This theatre should be torn down," thundered the master of the Seagull. Here we go again. (…) This is the last image that Chekhov leaves us at the end of Giardino, at the end of a life spent in the theatre. A person who has served other people all his life, without ifs and buts, forgotten. Says to himself, or to the theatre he is occupying "...You have no strength left, you have nothing left, nothing... Eh, good to nothing..." Then a tragic violin string to fill the scene. Even Chekhov, after all this good jam given away, leaves us with a sad note, as if he no longer wanted to laugh. And indeed there is from cry. Or, perhaps, from react." Leonardo Lidi
The theatrical marathon, staged on 7 July, sees the three stages of the Chekhov Project in succession: at 11 Il gabbianoto at 15 Zio Vanja and at 19 The Cherry Orchard.
As the director explains: "A trilogy with the same company to underline the importance and talent of Italian actresses and actors, classified in political thoughts in the relegation zone but a true precious stone of Italian theater." – continues Lidi – «The only common denominator required to deal with the Russian author: sincerity of soul. To be crystal clear in the desire to deliver three extraordinary texts to the public through the strength of the ensemble and therefore to be able to grasp the love that Chekhov dedicated to the figure of the actor in his writing dynamics."