Luigi Lo Cascio enchants Milano with its poetic moon

«Tell me the moon in the sky, tell me what a silent moon you are»? With the opening verse of Leopardi's Night Song of a Wandering Shepherd of Asia, Luigi Lo Cascio, the great Sicilian actor and director, started with his recital on the moon which enchanted the audience at the Bagni Misteriosi on Thursday 9 July. Even on an evening with a waning moon, the actor evoked the friendly satellite within every spectator and brought those who were lucky enough to be there to see his light again after the lockdown period just like "Ciaula" the protagonist of the splendid novel by Pirandello who acted. For over two hours the actor masterfully recited some of the texts he had chosen for the evening. And, having failed to do everything, he even promised: "Maybe we'll repeat the evening." It was the director Andrèe Ruth Shammah who decided to give a unique evening to the Milanese audience at the Franco Parenti Theatre, who had programmed for last season "Dracula" with Lo Cascio and Rubini and "Il sistema periodico" by Primo Levi performed by the Sicilian. Due to the lockdown everything was cancelled. «But we must all want, you must want, for the theater to start again in a great way – said the director – and for this reason we have decided to use both the internal and beautiful theater rooms and this unique external space for a truly immense actor like Luigi Lo Cascio." The amazement generated by the vision of the moon Lo Cascio told through the texts of Leopardi, without whom poetry would not exist, Pirandello but above all through great Sicilian authors, such as Gesualdo Bufalino, Luigi Piccolo, Vincenzo Consolo and Giuseppe Bonaviri. Among other gems, Lo Cascio gave the public a passage from his Othello in Sicilian: the speaker is a soldier friend of Othello who dreams with him of going to the moon riding a hippogriff.... All in Sicilian verses of absolute musicality. Don't miss it if it is presented again Milano or elsewhere.