Enigmatic but captivating is the best way to describe Teatri di Vita's Lotta d'Angeli, brought back for a brief run in January 2000. The show is well-travelled, having opened in Le Mans, France, in 1998, and later seen in Berlin, Budapest and throughout Italy. In this incarnation, the cast has two men and one woman, all dressed in white raincoats and appearing one by one, suitcase in hand, falling into a brightly-lit white space devoid of time and spatial markers. Who are they and what will become of them? Milena Magnani's scenario and text have less to do with religion than social observation. Her New-Age "angels" seem to be the victims of discrimination and exclusion -- in other words, society's losers.
A voice-over from a soccer broadcast alludes to another theme that is at center stage in Italy this year, the arbitrariness of referees -- injustice without any possible remedy. Although neither Magnani nor director Andrea Adriatico offer easy solutions, they give full expression to the emptiness that castaways must feel. Text in various languages underlines the universality of this predicament. Adriatico exploits the strengths of physical theater to suggest the mental state of his three subjects, Patrizia Bernardi, Filippo Plancher, Giorgio Volpi. The futility of normal existence is another theme: undressing and dressing or a romp on a white bed that fortuitously emerges from the darkness evoke nothing less than despair. The single note of hope is a pure white duck waddling across the set, as if to say that a return to the clear, simple rules of the natural world can point the way out of our existential morass.
By allowing plenty of breathing space around the succession of images Adriatico allows and even encourages the audience to participate in decoding process. Most memorable is the intense lighting that serves to concentrate attention on the particular part of the Parco dei Pini stage where the action occurs.
While slide projections (including images of Genoa) add originality to the presentation, the musical selections, notably from Bach's St. Matthew Passion at eardrum-splitting volume and equally loud hard rock, are more routine.
