Il vedovo - Massimo Ghini

Based on the homonymous and celebrated film by Dino Risi, the play Il vedovo is a tribute to the masterpiece of Italian cinema — which starred two legendary figures, Alberto Sordi and Franca Valeri — and a return to the great fun of the “commedia all’italiana.”

On stage is Alberto Nardi, a Roman industrialist, megalomaniacal but with poor, if not disastrous, business sense, married (probably for convenience) to a wealthy, shrewd and unscrupulous businesswoman, to whom he, perpetually besieged by creditors, turns when he needs signatures for contracts, promissory notes, or cash for his failed ventures. The wife, however, aware of her husband’s utter inability in business, has wisely not only stopped subsidizing him but continually humiliates him by calling him “cretinetti” even in public and, anonymously, lends him money on usurious terms through her intermediary, Commendator Lambertoni, further ruining him. Alberto can only devise improbable plans, together with his unlikely collaborators, to get rid of his wife and inherit her wealth. In a rollicking comic whirlwind, his attempts trigger absurd situations.

In this adaptation by Gianni Clementi and Ennio Coltorti, the action is moved to Rome: Massimo Ghini plays Alberto Nardi and Paola Tiziana Cruciani plays an Elvira no longer Almiraghi but Ceccarelli, who, although Roman, with cynical pragmatism dreams of moving to Milan without her husband, adopting its dialect to emancipate herself even lexically from the stereotypes that characterize Rome and its people, and thus insert herself into the great economic movement that will lead to the future “Milano da bere.”