Edipus

Thirty years after its debut, Federico Tiezzi and Sandro Lombardi bring Edipus back to the stage—Giovanni Testori’s masterpiece that, along with Ambleto and Macbetto, forms the renowned Scarrozzanti trilogy.

At the heart of the play is a traveling actor-manager, abandoned by his troupe: one actor has defected to a cabaret company, while the leading actress has left the stage to marry a furniture dealer from Brianza. Left alone, the Scarrozzante performs Sophocles’ Oedipus night after night, playing every role himself—from Laius to Jocasta, from Oedipus to Dionysus—in a spiraling frenzy.

As the performance unfolds, the line between myth and personal life dissolves. Oedipus’ resentment toward Laius mirrors the Scarrozzante's bitterness toward the actor who deserted him, while his feelings for Jocasta reflect his love-hate relationship with his former stage and life partner.

Testori’s language is revolutionary—an Italian that fuses Lombard dialect, French, Latin, and Spanish, with echoes of Ruzante. This linguistic inventiveness makes Edipus a landmark of "poetic theater." It depicts a world of theater in ruins, yet brimming with an indomitable vitality. As the Scarrozzante proclaims: "That theater… exists and will resist against everyone and everything until the end of all ends!".

A visionary artist straddling theater and the visual arts, playwright, actor, and director Federico Tiezzi once again directs Sandro Lombardi in the role of Edipus—a performance that earned him numerous awards and prompted critic Franco Quadri to marvel: “Who would have imagined that a Tuscan from Casentino would become the ideal interpreter of Giovanni Testori?”.