Roma – For almost two weeks, February 11th the last evening, Virginia Raffaeleactress, singer, imitator, dancer, fantasist, gives the enchanted audience two hours of real entertainment full of laughter, grace to spare, reflections dissolved in intelligent and ‘nice’ entertainment with her Samus written jointly by Raffaele herself and Giovanni TodescanFrancesco FreyrieDaniele Prato and with Federico Tiezzi who is also the director. The actress, fresh from three evenings of television which saw her as the protagonist in making available the skills of a twenty-year career, is full of Brancaccio Theatre also on the evenings of Friday 9th and Saturday 10th February nail of the Sanremo Festival.
We see her dealing with the voices of the carousel neighbors from when she was a girl at Moonlight, the large park, for decades the undisputed protagonist of the Capitoline entertainment, co-founded by the grandparents in the 1950s; then take to heart ‘the types’ who need to be given a voice in the 2000s like the Giorgiamaura, an unloved and perhaps short-sighted child who expresses a self-confidence that is more tender than annoying to the ears; the granny who calls herself because those who were at her house are now all soil for the flowers in the garden (the recipe for ‘chicken chaser’ and the stage stunt of the pill dispenser are hilarious); and then ‘the one who understood everything’ and reads everything in the light of ‘conspiracy theory’ so much so that (even if they had ever done it in mathematics) not even one plus one equals two.
But the voice of the little girl who has been under the colored neon lights of the shooting gallery, the Tagadà, the Ferris wheel, great attractions of the family amusement park, resumes, light-hearted or serious, the discussion of a happy childhood even if certain sometimes immensely bored “all the children would have done anything to get into the amusement park, and I would have done anything to be able to go out sometimes”; together with the history of her roots (Abruzzo, Calabria and Sinti), which have accustomed her to being with everyone, to finding soul and poetry, irony and sacrosanct defects in everyone but also recognizing distrust and prejudice because when you say that you are also Sinti ‘”everyone checks to see if they still have their wallets” which remains synonymous, and not even that much, with gypsies, rom, Romanipeople never looked upon favorably in the heart of Europe.
We have often considered the sunny beauty of this actress, deep dark eyes, long and silky hair, elegant physique, but now for her forty years she ‘forces’ us to look at the physical elasticity with which she seems to let herself be crossed by all women of her repertoire, of all ages and social backgrounds, thanks, undoubtedly, to the excellent writing of the lyrics, and also a mental freedom that allows her to make fun of everything and everyone and then to gratify them with a ray of beauty, which is typical of the human condition…Too much for a light-hearted comedy show? No, especially if you witness in ecstasy a Patty Pravo who has become a fairy of a forest of mushrooms, perhaps hallucinogenic, complete with a highlighter yellow color and rainbow wings, brought directly from the legendary 70s, who babbles about love, happiness, youth, bringing the theater down with applause. Or when, wearing the role of an opera singer, at a certain point she realizes that she no longer has the score of the Carmen who should also be singing, turns her magnificent dress of satin roses into a ‘trap’ and turns the audience into a nightmare as they expect amazing warbles that are left…speechless. Even the light juggling interludes of three graceful figures to whom a rarefied circus atmosphere is delegated are speechless.
Here, even in the motto of the show’s title, Samusà, which in the unwritten language of carnies means ‘to be silent’, Virginia always finds the words: they flow from her mouth, they ‘get stuck’ on the tongue, they stutter, they slow down (in the end some of her most successful imitations including Ornella Vanoni, Belén, Bianca Berlinguer, Sabrina Ferilli insult each other using, it seems, Virginia’s slender physique, almost possessed by them). Finally, reasoning while laughing, making irony, turning reality around as, we know, some ‘crazy heads’ do who, however, do not always tell lies, tells us that apart from some silences, such as the summer one, crossed by thousands of cicadas that make the night paradisiacal and poetic Roman, it is better not to rely too much on silences: which, to paraphrase, those of reason generate monsters, especially on topics such as inclusion, conspiracy theories, loneliness, aging, cohabitation; that it is better to talk, to dilute those divisive feelings that make us sadder and lonely. This is what the talented Virginia Raffaele gives in one evening, at the theatre. (Serena Grizi)
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