Now in its fifth year, the International Festival of Arts & Ideas is spread over three Connecticut cities this time. Artistic Director Paul Collard picks from far and wide to bring together presentations ranging from the popular to the challenging, just as the festival's title promises. The lone Italian entry comes from the Societas Raffaello Sanzio, an experimental theater group based in Cesena, near the Adriatic coast south of Venice. Romeo Castellucci presents a combination deconstruction and sensual exploration of the Julius Caesar theme. Shakespeare plus various ancient Roman historians provide the pared down text in Italian, mostly inaudible at this performance for want of body mikes, although English surtitles save the day.
The visual side is more consequential. Giovanni Rossetti (Brutus) and Lele Biagi (Cassius) in white robes plan the most conspicuous political assassination of ancient times. Diminutive Maurizio Carra as a mature Julius Caesar is stripped, washed, bound and laid to rest on an impromptu bier. Although this is an interesting musing on death as the destroyer of power, the same point could have been made without subjecting the audience to unessential nudity. Mark Anthony mounts an antique pedestal to deliver his address. (Is the choice of actor, Dalmazio Masini who speaks with altered voice due to a tracheotomy, a statement about the supreme orator or merely a challenge to American audiences that are generally served idealized images in theater and cinema?)
The second half is more intriguing. All has turned to black following a great fire, and the earlier generous lighting spots give way to a gloomy realm. Brutus and Cassius are now played by two smudgy-faced waif-like young women, Federica Santoro and Cristiana Bertini respectively. Against this action Castellucci's theatrical landscape is filled with the inanimate -- a horse skeleton, stuffed animals, rotating rough-hewn lighting supports, and a walking chair (these last two by metalworker Stephan Duve). Aided by Claudia Castellucci and Chiara Guidi, Romeo Castellucci is eager to show off his research into the concept of rhetoric.
Like acting, rhetoric aims to convince through technique, but nature is no less important a factor. Castellucci has the Act I Brutus (Giovanni Rossetti) thrust an endoscope down his throat to show his vocal chords. Later on, gulps of helium make him sound momentarily like Donald Duck. There a swipe at method acting with clever cartoon-style balloons interjected by Fabio Sajiz as an almost invisible character named ...vski [sic]. Castellucci's world view is firmly anchored in sober Christian symbolism, but a Duchamp/Magritte insouciance prevents pontification, itself the death of rhetoric.
Encountering an experimental work with such carefully prepared lighting and sound is rare outside of the BAM Next Wave Festival, but the company does itself an injustice by not explaining the show's concept in clear English.
