The pinnacle of story-telling. The pinnacle.
This theatre production, broadcast on Italian TV in 2005, is based on a series of semi-autobiographical stories of growing up in small town Italy in the highly politicised 1970s. In case this seems too dry, politics is never the main subject, but is woven into the stories of playing on railway tracks and falling in love and losing at rugby as a constant backdrop. Both adult and childhood are discussed with the same sardonic eye for detail, and an affection for the past that doesn’t turn into drab, plodding nostalgia.
The format of the show is simple. One man on a darkened stage telling tales to a live audience, with the occasional song. There’s certainly an intimacy in one person telling you a story for an hour or so, and Marco Paolini has enough charm to carry it through.
The finest episode, Un Filo di Pensieri (A thread of thoughts) begins on a rainy Milan protest march when a chance remark about a rugby match that he thought everyone else had forgotten about leads us into the lead character’s memories of his team reaching the final of a youth competition.
But it’s hard to find on the internet, expensive to pick up on DVD, and even if you do, there are no English subs. This means little chance of fame outside Italy, which is a shame since I think it’s a real gem and deserves a wider audience.
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