A meeting with Daniele Pecci, protagonist of the theatrical performance Divagazione e Delizie, which will be staged at Teatro Pacini in Pescia at 20:45.
Paris, 28 November 1899. An Evening with Sebastian Melmoth (Oscar Wilde) by John Gay.
Translation and direction by Daniele Pecci.
Daniele Pecci, a well-known figure in theatre and cinema and currently also appearing on television with the series Una nuova vita, will be on stage at Teatro Pacini in a tribute to the great writer and playwright Oscar Wilde.
Pecci, who also signs the translation and direction, brings to life a poetic, ironic, and deeply moving performance, in which downfall becomes narrative and the wound turns into living memory.
The text is composed entirely of writings by Oscar Wilde, including novels, short stories, comedies, essays, letters, and aphorisms. John Gay devised the premise according to which Wilde, in the final year of his life (1899), having been released from prison and living in exile in France—tired, ill, and completely bankrupt—rents small theatre spaces in order to survive, presenting himself to Parisian audiences as a “monster,” a “living scandal.” What unfolds is a kind of autobiographical lecture, at times interrupted by small plot twists, happenings, and confrontations with the two attendants and stagehands of the theatre.
Though veiled by a constant melancholy and sharp sarcasm, the first part of the text flows through memories, anecdotes, and often highly amusing stories. The second part draws extensively from the painful and powerful indictment that is De Profundis: the fateful love for Lord Alfred Douglas, the trial, imprisonment, the final years of exile between France and Naples, illness, and the foreboding of death drawing near.
