Italian Theatre Festival: Odysseus Filò

(This is a past event and is no longer running)

Performed by
Marco Paolini, Saba Anglana and Lorenzo Monguzzi

After a sell-out success in 2018, the Italian Theatre Festival returned to The Coronet Theatre to celebrate some of Italy’s most distinguished writers and performers.

The character of Ulysses imagined by Marco Paolini was the subject of Odysseus Filò – evolved from Paolini’s recent performances in  In the Age of Gods at Piccolo Teatro di Milano.

While Ulysses is recounting his past to Hermes, he is aware that he is facing a challenge in his present. What kind of joke gods are still playing at him? Forced to tell only what Hermes likes to hear, Ulysses evokes massacres, shipwrecks, loves, sacrileges, punishments.

Odysseus Filò is a song. However, it is neither the mermaids’  nor the gods’ song. The one who is weaving this song is Ulysses, loved and protected by Athena, persecuted by Poseidon, immensely desired by Calypso, coveted by Circe and treated by Nausicaa.

It is also a tale of immortality and death, about divine whims and human heritage; about amused gods and suffering mortals – the gods are comfortably seated while handing their interactive remote controls, the latter ones are war veterans unable to escape from their nightmares; they are castaways persecuted by the ghosts of those who shipwrecked before them.