“ALMOST FRIENDS” with Massimo Ghini and Paolo Ruffini: at the Manzoni Theater in Milano from 16 to 28 January 2024.

From 16 to 28 January 2024 at the Teatro Manzoni in Milano.

Almost Amici is an important story, one of those stories that deserve to be shared and told. Even with the language of the deepest emotions: the theatrical one. An adaptation for the theater of the subject and screenplay of Quasi Amici is fascinating because it allows us to expand, in theatrical dramaturgy, those emotions that arise for the cinema with another language, not only visual, but also filmic. Emotions that must, however, be strengthened with precise words and symbols on the stage in order to send us all back to a shared imagination with which our own can communicate. And participate. And it is extraordinary to tell even more in the intimacy of the words, of the exchanges, of the narrative turns, of the lights, of the movements, which only a theatrical dramaturgy can capture and restore, giving the profound sense of a great friendship in the making. Then observing the path that the two protagonists take to grow, each in their respective lives and in that of the other and how one becomes absolutely necessary for the other to be able to continue their path on this earth unscathed, or almost unscathed.

Two men so different as to constitute a theorization of antimatter. Two particles that could lead to an explosion, an annihilation of one's personalities and instead the miracle happens. And it is this secular miracle that I would like to tell. A very wealthy, rich, very rich, too rich, intelligent, charming man; a man who lives on culture and lives with culture, who moves and conquers and satisfies his narcissistic ego with his brain more than with his body. A man whom fate wanted, in retaliation, to relegate to just his brain, making him fall with a paraglider and fracturing his fourth cervical vertebra and taking back his body. That body, which was only a baggage of the mind, now in absence, becomes the ghost of an identity to be chased and recovered. And another man who has been in and out of prison, since he was a boy, quick, with his own lively intelligence and a culture acquired on the street and in the B-series films he has seen. But definitely smart. A man who prefers to put his body ahead of everything and leave his brain quiet in the background. A body that immediately tried to make its way into the degraded suburbs, where uncertainty becomes, as in nature, essential for determining one's place in the food chain. A predator who is actually prey to his own weaknesses. A man who deprived himself of the brain power that could have been decisive for him.

These two men meet by chance and this chance will ensure that they become indissoluble for each other, one indispensable to the life of the other and soothing to the fatal wound that everyone has within themselves. They don't know it but they possess a gift that everyone can give to the other: lightness. As in Pygmalion we witness by osmosis an education in life and culture and an education in lightness.
It is the absence of lightness, more than the illness, that keeps Philippe anchored in the chair, his heaviness of life, of his perception of the world, which nails him to wrong decisions with his adopted daughter, with his collaborators, but above all with himself.

You never forgive. It's not clear why. From the difficulty of living?

And the other man who made his lightness a way of not worrying about anything, of avoiding every problem, every depth, every discomfort. A frivolous, gaseous lightness, which leads him to resolve everything with his body, physically and strangely, heavily. A lightness that has the heaviness of an airship without hydrogen. An uncontrolled lightness.
Paul Valery said: «Il faut être léger comme l'oiseau, et non comme la plume».

One uses the body and one the mind. We need a total redistribution of talent. In the theatrical adaptation the role of Philippe, the man in the chair, will have to be rebalanced, because in the film version the story is very unbalanced in favor of Driss, the man who comes to help him. In the theatrical version the two roles will be equated in order to delve much more into their relationship and their search for this Calvinian lightness that makes us emotional, enjoy, laugh until we cry

I therefore imagined also including those moments of despondency in the film, due to the need for story time they probably didn't find space, instead in the theatrical version they allow us to enter the psyche of a completely paralyzed man who becomes one with his electric wheelchair. And in the head of another man who has considered life up until then as a light aperitif to be swallowed and then calmly digested. For example: a dream in which Philippe wakes up and we see him walking. And this disorientates us. Philippe immediately calls Driss, he is thrilled with the news he has to give him and Driss arrives but he is in the wheelchair. Philippe, as in his worst nightmare, realizes that it is only a dream and wakes up drenched in sweat in his bed. But in the dream, for once, he understood the way. He has lost the gravity that gave him heaviness. But the search for lightness also passes through comedy. Laughing will be the secret vehicle to understand even more the mechanisms that regulate the lives and destinies of these men. Laughing at yourself and others to get to know who is in front of us more deeply: naked, without screens. A machine man who jealously guards the essence of his being a man in an epistolary encounter with a woman who could prove to be his reason for living. Which in the end will be able to give us a glimpse of real life.

For the direction I imagined a large open space, a large panorama illuminated like a summer day, an autumn night, a rainy afternoon. It is an inclined plane that thins out towards the proscenium and which contains within it all the places of the story, which open up and sometimes become a study, bedroom, living room, sometimes a restaurant, etc. But then by closing themselves inside the practicable area they give us only a sloping plain in which to slide the wheelchair gently or laboriously push it uphill. An external non-place that could be a beach with the sea in front, the audience, or a meadow where paragliders fly and where in the finale, for magical realism, following a kite that Driss flies in the wind of an afternoon, Philippe finally acquires the his lightness and detaches himself from his wheelchair and flies as if he were on a paraglider, finally leaving that chair that was crushing him towards the heaviest gravity in the world.

Philippe has lost gravity. He has learned lightness and Driss, the light depth that does not make him fly and keeps Philippe anchored to him, as an important reference. Their friendship, a centering, to live and be men a little more aware of wonder and to be able to laugh, finally out loud.

Alberto ferrari

Enfi Teatro presents

• From January 16 28 2024 to
• weekdays 20,45pm – Sunday 15,30pm
• Saturday 27 January at 15,30pm and 20,45pm

ALMOST FRIENDS

from the film “Almost Friends” by Eric Toledano and Olivier Nakache

with MASSIMO GHINI and PAOLO RUFFINI

Adaptation and direction

• Alberto ferrari
  with
• Claudia Campolongo
• Francesca Giovannetti
• Leonardo Ghini
• Giammarco Trulli
• Giulia Sessich
• Diego Sebastian Misasi

Scene Roberto Crea – Costumes Stefano Giovani
Light design Pietro Sperduti – Music Roberto Binetti
Assistant director Cristiano Malacrino – Video Robin studio

Interpreters and characters

• Massimo Ghini – Filippo
• Paolo Ruffini – Driss
• Claudia Campolongo – Yvonne, The Voice of the Navigator
• Francesca Giovannetti – Magda and Eleonora
• Leonardo Ghini – Adam, Candidate, Caregiver, Gallery Owner
• Giammarco Trulli – Alberto, Gardener, Antonio Legenda, Waiter, Candidate
• Giulia Sessich – Deb and Elisa
• Diego Sebastian Misasi – Bastiano, Candidate, Caregiver, Violinist

TICKETS

From Tuesday to Friday

• Prestige €36,50 – Poltronissima €33,00 – Armchair €25,00 – Poltronissima under 26 years €16,00

Saturday and Sunday

• Prestige €41,00 – Poltronissima €36,50 – Armchair €26,50 – Poltronissima under 26 years €18,50

For purchase:

• ticket office Online Theatre
• by telephone 027636901
• Ticketone circuit

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