The Ba – Laylah Production is resurrecting a play that has been strangely neglected for the past few years. Even though it had been staged on Broadway in 1931 and filmed in Hollywood starring the glamourous Greta Garbo, it seems that this play written by Luigi Pirandello is little performed. But now Isabella Burton, the director, is presenting us this fascinating play on the exploration of Identity: As You Desire Me.
The first scene pictures the lead character Elma (Frances Rose ), a cabaret singer and a prostitute, singing in a dodgy and mundane cabaret in Berlin. She lives with the hack and violent writer, Carl Salter (Jonathan Sims) and his lesbian daughter Mop (Julia Hartley) sharing a sado-masochist relationship. She cannot remember her past and who she really is, so she performs an identity on the ironically fancy cabaret’s stage full of champagne and drugs.
Interrupting this depraved lifestyle, Boffi (Joe Robertson) comes to look for her claiming that she is Signora Lucia, the wife of the Venetian aristocrat Bruno Pieri (Lawrence Ridgway) who disappeared ten years ago during the war. When she “returns” to Bruno’s Italian villa doubts about her identity are raised. She discovers that Bruno has financial reasons to find his wife alive and Salter shows up at the villa with a madwoman saying that it is the real Lucia Pieri.
This play is very confusing because the director stages characters who constantly play mind games. Does Bruno really consider Elma as his wife ? Is Elma the real Signora Lucia? Nothing is as it seems.
Elma (Arabic for water) is constantly playing with her identity. She is nothing if not fluid. She is “a body without a name”. The actors’ performances are very impressive as they are all mind players who manipulate each other's. Frances Rose shines in the central role as she represent this tragic and ironic character who is torn apart between her different identities. She changes from being a femme fatale to the Italian homely wife. Lucia can only be created according to the others’ emotions, As you desire me.
This play is thrilling and full of suspense. The audience is constantly in search of her identity : it is not so much of a whodunit as a “who-is-she?”. Isabella Burton and Deana Gershuny’s interesting design takes us from the gloomily sensual world of Salter’s cabaret to the chic rustic Italian villa in which L’Ignota is trapped in their fake shininess.
The first scene pictures the lead character Elma (Frances Rose ), a cabaret singer and a prostitute, singing in a dodgy and mundane cabaret in Berlin. She lives with the hack and violent writer, Carl Salter (Jonathan Sims) and his lesbian daughter Mop (Julia Hartley) sharing a sado-masochist relationship. She cannot remember her past and who she really is, so she performs an identity on the ironically fancy cabaret’s stage full of champagne and drugs.
Interrupting this depraved lifestyle, Boffi (Joe Robertson) comes to look for her claiming that she is Signora Lucia, the wife of the Venetian aristocrat Bruno Pieri (Lawrence Ridgway) who disappeared ten years ago during the war. When she “returns” to Bruno’s Italian villa doubts about her identity are raised. She discovers that Bruno has financial reasons to find his wife alive and Salter shows up at the villa with a madwoman saying that it is the real Lucia Pieri.
This play is very confusing because the director stages characters who constantly play mind games. Does Bruno really consider Elma as his wife ? Is Elma the real Signora Lucia? Nothing is as it seems.
Elma (Arabic for water) is constantly playing with her identity. She is nothing if not fluid. She is “a body without a name”. The actors’ performances are very impressive as they are all mind players who manipulate each other's. Frances Rose shines in the central role as she represent this tragic and ironic character who is torn apart between her different identities. She changes from being a femme fatale to the Italian homely wife. Lucia can only be created according to the others’ emotions, As you desire me.
This play is thrilling and full of suspense. The audience is constantly in search of her identity : it is not so much of a whodunit as a “who-is-she?”. Isabella Burton and Deana Gershuny’s interesting design takes us from the gloomily sensual world of Salter’s cabaret to the chic rustic Italian villa in which L’Ignota is trapped in their fake shininess.