The yoke of exile in Argo opens the cycle of current Italian theatre at the Akademia Theatre

Argos was the name of Ulysses' dog. Only he recognized him when he returned home disguised as a vagrant after twenty years of warlike odysseys. Vera (a superb Ariella Reggio) is an elderly woman with Alzheimer's who fled Pula (Istria) after World War II. And York is the name of the dog she had as a child. A dog that, like Argos, is a symbol of home and the land to which she now returns on a road trip organized by her friend Beatrice (Maria Ariis) to discover something seemingly as simple as her mother's birthdate. The mother, the daughter, and the squeaky-clean Clara (Lucia Limonta) embark on a journey that confronts them with the past and memory, with the silence that always surrounds exile. Three generations, three lives, three personalities, and many miles traveled in a beat-up car to process the past and the present, to shed light on the unknown.

The production by Teatro Stabile del Friuli Venezia Giulia and Teatro Stabile di Bolzano, which ran from February 20th to 22nd, inaugurated a cycle of contemporary Italian theater at the Teatro Akademia, which will continue until the end of March with three performances and a series of talks. And indeed, the cycle couldn't have started better than with a show that makes a virtue of simplicity, relying entirely on the words and the actresses. A row of seats on an empty stage and carefully chosen lighting draw us into the intimacy of these women, no different from so many others around the world. The grandmother's delight under the yoke of exile, the mother's existential frustration, the liberation of the cleanser—these pieces stir emotions and also elicit laughter. Three excellent actresses and the word, nothing but the word, under the poetic direction of Serna Sinigaglia.

The cycle continues this weekend with the production of the Teatro Biondo di Palermo Stand up for Giuda (From February 27 to March 1), a look at Judas Iscariot who rebels against the collective conscience that has turned him into a symbol of betrayal. Also worth mentioning Pinocchio, or the spectacle of fatherhood (from March 11 to 29), a text by the actor and director Enrico Ianniello (premiered the monologue Isidore in the same Theatre) based on Collodi's Pinocchio, performed by himself and by the actor and director Moreno Bernardi (a regular at the Akademia); and Whisper without consistency (April 11 and 12), in which Ianniello pays homage to the Neapolitan author Enzo Moscato, successor to Eduardo De Filippo and Raffaelle Viviani, with a dramatized reading of the work Luparella and the projection of Rosai, a film by Mario Martone about this show directed by Tony Servillo.