Luigi Pirandello is the greatest Italian playwright of all time, and fully merited the Nobel Prize in Literature bestowed on him in 1934. The current production, unnecessarily retitled "Absolutely! (Perhaps), premiered in 1917, and is usually known as "Right You Are If You Think You Are." The new version, by Martin Sherman (best known for Bent), ever- so-slightly tightens the original and is eminently actable. This is the seventh of Pirandello's 44 plays, and like many of them, is an elaboration of one of his short stories. A tragifarce, the play is the dramatist's clearest treatment of the relativity of truth -- a position embodied in Laudisi (the authorial stand-in), who asks, "Do you think we know, really know, who other people are, or what they are, or what they do, or why?"
The central situation here involves three newcomers who fled a town destroyed by earthquake: Signor Ponza, his wife, and his mother-in-law, Signora Frola. Why does the wife never go out? Why does the mother-in-law live in a different part of town and communicate with the wife only at a distance? Is this Ponza's first or second wife? Is Signora Frola's daughter alive or dead? Who is mad? Is one just humoring the other? The bizarre relationship of the trio has set the town's tongues wagging -- first Laudisi's family and then an ever-increasing number of neighbors given to nosy gossiping. Except for Laudisi, everyone is consumed with a determination to ascertain the truth (my lips are sealed).
Signora Frola is not a difficult role, but it is beautifully handled by Joan Plowright (widow of Lord Olivier), returning to the stage for the first time in more than a dozen years. As Laudisi, Oliver Ford Davies shuffles about amusingly in cardigan and slippers. His young niece Dina makes a fine impression in the hands of Sian Brooke, fresh out of drama school. All the other players are no more than passable.
The 80-year-old Franco Zeffirelli, directing in London for the first time in 25 years, also designed the strange setting of mirrors, mosaics and gold bars, and had the poor idea of seating some audience members on stage.
