Saturday 22 July 2023 at 21:15 in Piazza Cesare Battisti in the centre of Trento, on the occasion of the Teatro Capovolto there will be a theatrical performance by Martin McDonagh
translated by Carlo Sciaccaluga and directed by Carlo Siaccaluga.
The comedy is hilarious to say the least, and the premise helps: in a Carmichael hotel room, a middle-aged hitman missing his left hand leaves a message on his mother's voicemail to reassure her about her health. From this moment on, a claustrophobic story begins (the action takes place in the same room from beginning to end), violent, a dark comedy in full McDonagh style. The mysterious man has been searching for his left hand for 27 years. Two young lovers, a black boy and a blonde, cheap dealers, try to sell him a hand stolen from the natural history museum, provoking the fury of Carmichael, under the gaze of a strange and disturbing concierge, a former convict, whose interventions risk precipitating the story. There are countless comedic opportunities, and McDonagh doesn't miss a single one. The comedy is sometimes very dark, violence and death, racism and ignorance dominate the scene for long stretches, but it is rare not to laugh for more than a couple of minutes in a row. Significantly, the violent, ignorant, racist, comedian Carmichael suffered an amputation as a child. And the story he tells to justify it seems incredible. With all evidence, the British writer evokes an image typical of psychiatric science: those who have suffered an amputation during the process of forming their identity, and do not know how to accept it, will pour their hatred towards the world in an attempt to reattach the lost limb to their body. But it is an impossible struggle, as evidenced by the moment when Carmichael's suitcase fortunately opens revealing its contents, dozens and dozens of real hands collected over years of research. But McDonagh, and this is one of his greatness as a writer (and as a filmmaker, just look at the small masterpieces that are In Bruges or Three Posters in Ebbing, Missouri), as he demonstrated for example wonderfully in The Pillowman, does not explain his metaphors. It is up to us, through the suggestions that the author gives us in the form of the action that unfolds before our eyes, to eventually reach our conclusions. McDonagh's theatre is theatre. It is action, relationship, accident, whether comic or dramatic, it is never a lecture on man. And so, laughing, on the way home, after witnessing the show, we hear with surprise that, without wanting to instruct us, McDonagh's Anglo-Irish genius has insinuated something into our stomachs."
