Raw and Exclusive Australian Premiere Sure to Shock and Awe
When a production is simultaneously described as an ‘utterly compelling verbal symphony…’ (The Herald, UK), ‘…truly shocking and brilliant,’ (British Theatre Guide) and ‘…terrifying and hard to ignore’ (The Guardian, UK) the show concerned is clearly a provocative, even controversial one. Once the Italian cult phenomenon of Cristian Ceresoli’s La Merda rages into town for the Adelaide Festival, audiences will understand why.
Shrill, howling, even operatic, the poetic yet raw solo performance of La Merda by multi-award-winning actress Silvia Gallerano is intensely powerful. A naked Gallerano sits alone on stage as a young and ‘ugly’ actress, while revealing the rage and deep sadness she feels within. Her brutally honest secrets are spewed out in a tragedy of three movements: The Thighs, The Dick, The Fame, together with a counter-movement, Italy.
This is a shocking account of modern society and its pursuit of fame, perfect bodies, patriarchy, courage and need for approval.
I asked La Merda’s creator Cristian Ceresoli to describe the evolution of the work. How did it begin? Was personal experience part of its genesis, or was it always intended as an observation of society in general?
“There’s a multiple and contemporaneous explosion of simultaneous ideas,” replied Ceresoli, “as a sort of contrapuntal piece written as if it was music. An insane flow, a fragile cascade that comes to be a most precise mechanism that must be embodied rather than performed. In the very middle of that furious explosion of simultaneous sources, we can recognize part of my intimate and personal experience as well as Gallerano’s.”
He said he accepts that the production may revolt some in its audience, but insists it “must be so”. “We never meant to write or perform about something,” he said. “We wanted to be the object, the core of it. Never to judge, but always to be part of the rejoicing as well as the disgusting or raving.”
The show’s performer Silvia Gallerano was moved to contribute her own analysis of the production to me, describing it as “brutally raw as well as complex and refined”. She added, “As a writer, Ceresoli describes poetically what he feels around him, paints a fresco of our age, and I give voice and body to it. There’s our time in this poetical score, with its squalors and joys, there’s cruelty written with candor. You may laugh, you may cry, get disgusted, irritated, definitely feeling that it is all about you, and me.”
La Merda certainly shocked and awed audiences during its 2012 Edinburgh Fringe World Premiere. It also won the 2012 Scotsman Fringe First Award for Writing Excellence (Cristian Ceresoli) and the Stage Award for Acting Excellence as Best Solo Performance (Silvia Gallerano) and so followed a sell-out European tour. Several other awards have also been won by the show.
La Merda’s Adelaide Exclusive Australian Premiere is brought to town by Marta Ceresoli, Richard Jordan Productions and Produzioni Fuorivia.
Undoubtedly unique and with a text described by its own team as “provocative, scandalous and beastly”, the one hour sensory explosion that is La Merda will give Adelaide Festival audiences a theatre experience they’ll never, ever forget.
Lesley Reed
WHEN: Thursday March 5- Sunday March 8, 8.30 pm. 1 hour with no interval.
WHERE: Space Theatre, Festival Centre.
BOOKINGS: adelaidefestival.com.au or BASS 131 246.
Note: This show contains nudity.
Images: Silvia Gallerano.
Credit: Valeria Tomasulo, Adelaide Festival of Arts
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