THE LAST BLOW

In the exact instant you want to give up, you can go through a whole lifetime.
There is much to lose: a challenge to be solved with a clean cut slash.
Perhaps the day of the last goodbye has come?
The house on fire, a new married couple, a coffin half open.
Then something or someone, unexpectedly, changes the course of events.
He, or she, appears on tiptoe, almost unnoticed, and
like an unexpected guest and map engineer, rewrites the boundaries of our self.
He opens our eyes, rubs them with briny wisdom. He offers his hands open as hope.
“Leave? Let him die? What is to be done?”

text and direction
Giuseppe L. Bonifati

set designer
Linda Sugataghy

partnership
DOO  (IT) / Det Flyvende Teater (DK)
and other partners to be defined

An Amish Family consisting of a Father, a Mother and two Twin Sisters is at the bedside of a dead son. “A Dead Man” talking, who has committed suicide for love; around him there are some people, like the beloved “Northern Woman” (The Treason), “Little Bird” (The Consciousness) and the mystical “Biancospino” (the Wisdom). Before to die there are still few issues to be clarified, which will allow the man to elaborate the mourning love and push his relatives to reflect on the true affective relationships of the family.

I felt the echo of a woman coming from the North, like a ghost who visits an artist in a dream. She appeared with another strange character, that of a semi-mystical figure, “Hawthorn”, a priest dressed in white to who everyone confesses why they want to see a poor man die. Two Siamese sisters of the dying person, a father and a mother, make up the Amish family. A little bird represents childhood, the grace of the past, while a mute man is not just mute. I imagine that a kiss of the Wife from the North, (a kiss if we are romantic), or a last sexual embrace, (to allow a crude moment of theatre), wakes the Dead Man or gives him the final blow. The final blow everyone longs for, invoked even by the sisters, who want their part of the inheritance, of the land, or simply because of he has occupied too long the only big bed in the house.

photos: THE LAST BLOW | dec 2012 | International Workshop | Odin Teatret

(Francesca De Sanctis-L’Unità)
It ‘s interesting the writing of this young playwright, who likes to take his times, his right breaks and than give to the carachters a dry and concise sentence, everything that they have to say (…) I mean, maybe we should write down the name of Giuseppe L. Bonifati in our agenda and check what he does in the theatres.