It’s not easy to act for two hours on stage stuck in a wheelchair. Massimo Ghini succeeds, playing the role of Philippe in Almost friends, from the film by Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache. The show made its debut at the Parioli Theater, today at the Metropolitan in Catania, directed by Alberto Ferrari. In the role of Driss, Paolo Ruffini.
«Several times I have interpreted transpositions of films on stage – says the actor – but it is the first time that I happen to embody a quadriplegic, on the big screen played by François Cluzet, and to stay still for the whole time of the representation. I accepted the challenge for one of my quirks as an artist, but it’s a lot of effort because it’s one thing to play the character on a film set, where obviously there are various stops, it’s another thing in the theater in front of the live audience. For me, who already by nature am not the type to sit still and as an actor I am very physical, the effort is double. Throughout the show I can only move my head, up, down, left and right. However, I am quite specialized in diseases: in the past, for example, I also happened to treat an Alzheimer’s patient and, recently, one affected by covid. I enjoy transforming myself, putting myself on the line».
How did he prepare?
«I don’t want to tell lies… I didn’t go to the Actor’s Studio to get into character: I sat down and started acting… it’s a job. However, I felt the real emotion when at the end of the show, with which we have already toured some cities to run it in, spectators who are truly paralyzed came to congratulate me: they were waiting for me at the exit of the theater to greet me and with I chatted with them for a long time. It was somehow sharing a terrible state, only I pretend it, they really live it.
The part of the carer, who in the film was the black actor Omar Sy, here is the white Ruffini…
«Oh yes, because in the true story, from which the beautiful film was based, it was not a black African, but an Algerian North African. And we have decided not to betray the truth of this human affair. We concentrated on its deepest content, that is, on the encounter between an intellectual and a bit snobbish bourgeois, that is me, and an ignorant delinquent, that is Paolo. But our staging has a harsh language, it is politically incorrect as was the film: there is no ecumenical pietism».
And to think that you felt your first attraction for the theater, serving Holy Mass…
“Certain! As a kid, being an altar boy… because if you think about it, the Mass is exactly a real representation, complete with a costume to wear, gestures to do, sacred words to say… More theater than that! However, then, in high school I switched to Molotov cocktails … it was the period of student protests and they even failed me ».
Also rejected at the Academy of Dramatic Art…
«Yes, but the revenge took place when Giorgio Strehler chose me, albeit for a small role, in his Re Lear… And if you please. When I told my mother, he thought I had made it up… Instead, the great director adored me, he enjoyed calling me the “Romanaccio”. But then I was chosen by Vittorio Gassman to play Cassio; Franco Zeffirelli to play Mortimer in Maria Stuarda with Rossella Falk and Valentina Cortese… and so on. Some people annoyed that I was hired by such personalities, because I was too cool, I didn’t have the physique of a young Werther and then I didn’t go to school or even the avant-garde cellars of the 70s: I immediately moved to Serie A. If anything, to earn some money in the summer, when the theater tours ended, I cut my teeth organizing shows in the Valtour villages with Rosario Fiorello. In short, I didn’t miss anything.”
Not even political commitment…
«I inherited my passion from my father, a partisan and exponent of the communist party. In his time, I accepted to fill the position of municipal councilor of the Democratic Party in Lazio for voluntary work, but I stress: I have never looked for work through politics ».