It's not true but I believe it

What we are going to tell is a laughable tragedy, populated by a series of characters with improbable names and who are somehow modern versions of the masks of the commedia dell'arte. The protagonist of this story is very similar to some of Molière's characters that Luigi De Filippo loved very much. The miserly, very miserly entrepreneur Gervasio Savastano lives in the perpetual nightmare of being the victim of the jinx. His life has become a real hell because he sees ominous signs everywhere: in the people he meets, in the correspondence he finds on his desk, in the dreams he has at night. Perhaps he fears that someone or something could threaten the economic empire that he has managed to set up with so many sacrifices. Anything, even the most banal, sends him into crisis. Those around him no longer know how to approach him. His wife and daughter are on the verge of a nervous breakdown; they can't leave the house because he prevents it. Even his employees are tired of tolerating those absurd obsessive delusions.
At one point his whims cross the threshold of the ridiculous: he fires his employee Malvurio only because he is convinced that he brings bad luck. The man threatens to report him, take him to court and file a slander lawsuit. It seems like the preamble to a tragedy, but we are in a comedy that makes you laugh. And in fact Sammaria appears on the threshold of his office, a young man looking for work.
He seems intelligent, jovial and prepared, but Commendatore Savastano is attracted by another quality of that young man: his hump. From here start a series of paradoxical and hilarious events that will see the credulity of poor Commendator Savastano at the center of the story.
Peppino De Filippo had set his story in the slightly holographical Naples of the 1930s. Luigi had postponed the setting about twenty years later. We will follow his intuition by bringing the action even closer to the present day, setting the story in a Naples of the 80s, a somewhat tragicomic and surreal Naples in which Mario Merola, Pino Daniele and Maradona lived together.

CATEGORIES

• Theatre