Prima del Temporale

In the Magma of Memory

Massimo Marino

Where better to recount a life spent in theatre, for theatre, than in the intimate, warm refuge of a dressing room? At the start of the play, Umberto Orsini has taken shelter there—an hour before stepping on stage for The Storm by August Strindberg (it’s cold both outside and in his hotel room). He’s worried: one of his beloved cats has gone missing. He chats with the wardrobe assistant, a sharp young woman who knows nearly everything about his career—and that of other great actors like Tino Carraro, the unforgettable star of The Storm under Strehler’s direction. A fire marshal barges in, telling the actor to put out his cigarette: smoking is forbidden in the theatre! On the table, Orsini finds an envelope. Inside is a book—What Makes Sammy Run? by Budd Schulberg. It's the very same edition he read countless times as a young man, complete with its original bookmark: a Liebig trading card.

The dressing room becomes a magical box, summoning, as in a Fellini dream, episodes from the actor’s life: anecdotes, encounters, friendships, passions, and loves. A journey—ironic, touching—through seventy years of his theatre, of theatre itself, and of Italian history.

“The idea,” says director Massimo Popolizio, Orsini’s long-time stage companion (notably in Copenhagen by Michael Frayn), “comes from an autobiographical book Umberto wrote, Sold Out (Laterza, 2019). We're in an unnamed city, just before the final performance of Strindberg’s play. It’s a Bernhardian situation”—a nod to one of Orsini’s most acclaimed performances, Il nipote di Wittgenstein by Thomas Bernhard, an intense dialogue in the form of a monologue, a discourse with ghosts—his own ghosts.

Popolizio continues: “It’s the story of an Italian man trying to better himself in the 1950s. He leaves Novara, a family impoverished by war. He applies to the National Academy of Dramatic Arts and—despite his pronounced Northern accent—is accepted. We have Umberto re-enact his entrance exam, using a passage from Pirandello’s L’uomo dal fiore in bocca —the same piece he performed then.”

To redo an audition—like in the worst of nightmares. At ninety-one, the actor finds himself reliving the nervous hopefulness of youth, at the threshold of the life that would become his. In that backstage cave of apparitions, he leafs through the book of his memories. Footage emerges from the walls like mold—living patches of time.

“Memories are triggered by external stimuli,” Orsini explains, “in a non-linear up-and-down. But there’s no nostalgia, nor mere reminiscence.” It is a journey through time and the extraordinary craft of the theatre.

He recounts meetings with actors and friends: fellow Academy students like Gian Maria Volonté and Giancarlo Giannini; members of La Compagnia dei Giovani—Giorgio De Lullo, Romolo Valli, Rossella Falk; Corrado Pani, a star across film, stage, and television. Love stories surface too, including a twenty-year relationship with one of the Kessler twins, Ellen. We hear passages from The Brothers Karamazov, from the days when television dramas—sceneggiati, as they were called—carried the pensive rhythm of theatre. We witness his relationships with titanic directors like Luchino Visconti and Luca Ronconi, and the artistic and personal challenges they posed. We see Orsini as a photo-novel actor and a film star, including in Emanuelle 2 with the beautiful Sylvia Kristel, whose feminine fragility he recalls vividly.

Many of his past roles are conjured up with a theatrically clever device. We see young Umberto watching four or five black-and-white films a day at the cinema owned by his brother.

“Everything is mixed together in a blender of memory.” With wry humor and an inimitable ear for language. “Words are our trade. You must confront them—not avoid them. Our match with the written word is not only our tool, it’s the obstacle we must overcome.”

His path to acting began with a notary in Novara, where as a young clerk he was made to read legal documents aloud. The office secretaries, enchanted by his voice—still capable of stirring hearts—secretly entered him into the Academy’s auditions.

Now, nearly seventy years later, we reach the final performance of The Storm, and perhaps the final performance of the actor himself. “The show was going to be called L’ultima recita,” says Orsini. “I wanted a dramatic title, but we changed our minds. Still, this is the hardest role: I’m not playing a character written by someone else. I’m playing myself—and my world.”

We see him rehearsing his lines, repeating them, often lengthy passages, even while playing tennis. We’re granted access to his most intimate vault, shadowed by the melancholy of having outlived so many peers—colleagues and friends who departed younger than he is now. This emotional thread is mirrored in the choice of Strindberg’s piece, which Orsini was unable to stage when the pandemic struck. We may not hear (as the show, at the time of writing in April, has yet to begin rehearsals) the playwright’s mournful conclusion: “The first streetlamp! Autumn has arrived! Our season—the season of the old! Darkness surrounds us, but reason lights our way with its blind lantern and helps us stay on course. […] The peace of old age! And this autumn, I shall leave, this house of silence.” A different, unrevealed quote from the text will take its place.

Judging from the script—written by Orsini himself, who has frequently adapted other playwrights’ works or penned original ones—this show offers a vivid, life-filled portrait of old age. It’s a rich accumulation of encounters, an enviable constellation of affections, experiences, visions—including a radiant young Virna Lisi, his artistic partner in past years. Never sentimental, always with a mischievous undertone, the piece builds contrasts between present and past, all the while returning to the haunting refrain: “Where are you running, Sammy?”—a symbol of someone who has burned through life’s experiences, chasing a frenzied path to self-discovery.

“I have seventy years of theatre behind me—it’s a magma in which I feel at ease,” says Orsini. “As for writing: I served as president of the Riccione Drama Prize for three editions. We received more than 300 submissions a year. None of them matched my taste. This one, however, I like. Massimo Popolizio’s presence guarantees its success. He’s full of doubts, splits hairs, invents without ever becoming cloying.”

Many of these memories have been nurtured by Orsini’s habit of sharing backstage stories during public appearances. “Audiences love peeking behind the curtain.”

Will this truly be the great actor’s final performance? He doesn’t say. Perhaps he doesn’t know. But he does reflect: “Why should I keep dragging myself on tour through every city in Italy, when I could act in my home theatre—the Eliseo—where I knew every inch? I could tell how full the house was just by listening to the murmur of the crowd before the curtain rose…”

And yet this show will prove that Sammy still runs. Because in the world of artistic creation, just when you think you’ve grasped the goal, it slips from your fingers. It turns back into a dream—a shadow that vanishes. And so, once again, you must chase it: to give it form, ephemeral and fertile, born of imagination.