Edipus

Not all tragic figures are granted the mercy of death after enduring immense suffering and the cruel reversals of fate. Oedipus, the most ill-fated of men, is condemned to wander the world, burdened by the weight of accumulated sorrow; one could even argue that his true tragedy—the need to go on living, despite everything—only begins at the end of the drama. It is therefore highly significant that The Trilogy of the Wandering Players, written by Giovanni Testori between 1972 and 1977, should close on such a note of bleak and inevitable resignation: the actor who has played Oedipus countless times prepares to bow for the last time, his theatre troupe is dissolving, and his personal life is equally in shambles—yet he is denied even the luxury of a tragic, glorious death.

But who is this wretched actor, as ill-starred as a Greek hero? The three plays that compose Testori’s trilogy—Ambleto, Macbetto, Edipus—chronicle the misadventures of a ragtag theatre company (“a most impoverished troupe”), cobbling together productions of Shakespeare and the ancient tragedians with meagre resources. The struggles of myth intertwine—almost to the point of overlap—with the professional and personal hardships of the actors, resonating through the voices of some of the most iconic characters in theatrical literature, in a ceaseless interplay between mimesis and metatheatre.

As in much of his prolific literary oeuvre, Testori casts a loving eye on a world of outcasts, eccentrics, and nonconformists. At the same time, he paints, with vivid specificity, the customs of the attori scarrozzanti—wandering players accustomed to touring Italy with trunks full of dusty costumes and a worn-out repertoire to perform in public squares for a few coins. One can clearly hear, in the Trilogy, echoes of other equally famished and tattered troupes from theatrical history: from Goldoni’s playwrights begging for work in Teatro comico, to Pirandello’s Giganti della montagna, to the threadbare costumes and hollow-eyed face of Eduardo De Filippo’s company leader in L’arte della commedia.

One might wonder how Testori, an art historian and literary scholar, was able to portray this world so intimately—one he had not, at the time, experienced firsthand. The answer, as so often in such cases, lies in a human encounter. Perhaps Trilogia degli Scarrozzanti would never have been born had Giovanni Testori not one day sat in a theatre audience and applauded the great Franco Parenti. “When an actor wins me over,” he would later write, “I no longer hear the words he says—I begin to hear the ones I wish he would say. Before leaving, I went up to him and said: ‘Franco, now I know what I need to write for you.’”

In creating the existential splendor and misery of those imaginary Lombard wanderers, the author thus draws upon tales of the old Italian travelling theatre, heard firsthand from Franco Parenti. Ambleto, directed by a very young Andrée Ruth Shammah, premiered in 1973 in a former cinema on Via Pier Lombardo, which soon became one of Milan’s most important cultural and theatrical venues. Macbetto followed in 1974, and the trilogy concluded with Edipus in 1977. Testori had already conceived his version of the Sophoclean masterpiece—drenched in the damp air of Milan’s suburban fringe (its original title was to be Edipo a Novate)—in 1973, and it was slated to debut in 1975, but it only reached the stage two years later.

In its final form, Edipus is undoubtedly the darkest of the trilogy’s three plays. Between its lines one breathes an air of inexorable failure, as though even the very possibility of dramaturgical structure—or of theatre itself—were being denied. The lead actor is alone, abandoned by his colleague and wife, who has left him for a wealthy industrialist from Brianza. This is not merely the sad end of a personal relationship, but a broader betrayal—a collapse of an entire worldview, the implosion of a whole system of values. The Oedipal-actor's solitude—his only companion a silent technician to whom he occasionally speaks—means that the play cannot fully be performed. Dialogue collapses into monologue, the plurality of roles is absorbed by a single performer, who, with extraordinary virtuosity, must portray all the central characters of the saga in rapid, dizzying costume changes.

And yet, beneath the words of this solitary Lombard Edipus, one senses a desperate longing for life. Where Sophocles’ hero is a victim of fate, buffeted by incomprehensible oracles and unaware guilt, Testori’s Oedipus takes ownership of his crooked destiny. He desires, he wills, he hates: he kills Laius deliberately, and unites with his mother joyfully. Theatrical performance—pared down to its most minimal, dying form—thus regains its essential purpose: a scandalous revelation, a defiant strike against social hypocrisy, a sacred rite in service of truth.

After its premiere in 1977, Edipus returned to the stage only in 1994. Franco Parenti’s role was taken up by Sandro Lombardi, under the direction of Federico Tiezzi. One might ask why this small gem of Italian drama remained locked away for nearly two decades. Among the many possible answers (some tied to the historical-political climate of late 20th-century Italy), one stands out: the linguistic complexity of Testori’s dramaturgy, which may well have intimidated—and still intimidates—potential performers, programmers, and producers. Yet this swirling linguistic pastiche, with its extraordinary blend of Lombard dialect, Latin, European loanwords, poetic heights, and graphic physiological detail, pulses with the rhythm and physicality of theatre itself. It bears the raucous and moving concreteness of the world of guitti—the lowly travelling players—it seeks to portray.

Today, Edipus is heard once more by audiences through the voice of Sandro Lombardi, in a historically resonant revival brought to life by one of Italy’s most passionate and experienced interpreters of Testori’s work. The play arrives in Spoleto like a ship long at sea, its keel etched with the traces of past crossings. In the trials of the actor and his “company,” the audience will detect tales—real and imagined—from generations of theatrical life. Like a set of nesting dolls, the voice of Oedipus overlaps with that of the actor-character, and with the voice of the flesh-and-blood performer on stage. All three cry out together how much toil, how much of one’s life, how much devout commitment theatre demands.

‍

Text by Maddalena Giovannelli