A reproduction of Mantegna’s Dead Christ lying on the ground on the right and an equally undressed standing man observing it. In the large empty stage of the Elfo Puccini Theater, with a few objects scattered here and there, including a toilet in the center, the new earthly adventure kicks off and the passion of “Kristo” the show that the Catania choreographer Roberto Zappalà presented at MilanoltreFestival.
Roberto Zappalà certainly does not stop in front of the sacred theme of the Gospels, a main subject of religious iconography and which, at least in the last hundred years, cinema has told in countless versions. He, Zappalà, takes it back by staging only one performer. But his Christ, here, is not the son of God, but a poor man who believes himself to be Christ. He moves slowly, several times he takes the position of Christ on the cross, with his arms outstretched.
And again he wanders around the scene ringing phrases taken from texts by great poets and thinkers, from Wisława Szymborska to Leonardo Sciascia Gianfranco Ravasi. A text sometimes covered with baroque music.
Or throw arrows against power. He hears like a populace while a roaring audience can be heard in the background. He mentions the Sermon on the Mount and the Beatitudes, but also admits that “Many love humanity. He is the neighbor they hate ”. Alone on stage for most of the time he does not have the apostles beside him, who are only symbolized by twelve chairs, which he himself places at the center of the stage. The benches ready for the last supper.
Here are ten nuns appearing. They hold whips with which they seem to want to whip the victim. They wrap it in a web of threads from which the performer comes out, leaving this transparent framework empty. All illuminated by a lighthouse on the bottom while the semi-darkness looms. Temptations? They are still the same women who reappear in sexy dresses, miniskirts, high heels, long gloves and ramshackle laughter. Or, with dusters in hand, they clean up the few objects.
The company wants to incorporate him by dressing him with pants, jacket, shirt and bow tie. Garments that he soon gets rid of while a rain falls from above that floods him and turns red like the blood that the iconography shows us gushing from the Savior’s wounds.
Zappalà loves grandiose rhetoric. He addressed the religious themes by telling the hysteria and superstition (but also the mafia infiltrations) linked to the cult of Sant’Agata, the protector of Catania. In the “Ninth” he uses Beethoven’s Symphony in Liszt’s transcription for two pianos, staging a cross and a hand of Fatima.
The protagonists, on alternate evenings, are two formidable performers who have always collaborated with the choreographer: Massimo Trombetta and Salvatore Romania. As always, and here more than ever, the show makes use of the dramaturgical contribution of Nello Calabrò, it is co-produced by the Teatro Stabile of Catania, it is born in Scenario Pubblico, a structure in the center of Catania recognized by the Ministry of Culture National Production Center of dance.