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Jermyn Street Theatre presents
Words of Honour
Written by Attillio Bolzoni
Directed by Manuela Ruggiero
Adapted for the stage by Marco Gambino and Manuela Ruggiero
Starring Marco Gambino and Patrizia Bollini
Video design by Gabriel Zagni
Designed by Cherry Truluck
Jermyn Street Theatre
3 October
A review by Chad Armitstead for EXTRA! EXTRA!
Gather round the warm glow of a bloody, burning paper saint. It’s an evening with a very special family. From Sicily. Like the notorious Cosa Nostra, Words of Honour’s stories quietly infiltrate your mind until you almost believe these are the stories of ‘soldiers,’ not career killers. Words of Honour: The Mafia Exposed is a stage adaptation of Parole d’Onore, a best-selling book and the result of Attilio Bolzoni’s twenty-five years of reporting on Sicily. Marco Gambino, who stars in the show with cast-mate Patrizia Bollini, adapted the work for the stage with director Manuela Ruggiero. Drawn from interviews, news stories, research and court testimonies, the show is a series of biographical vignettes of major mafia players (played by Gambino) and the women who tolerate them (played by Bollini). For mafia cinephiles, some of the show will be familiar territory, but the show does expose a few new characters and their diabolical details. It’s a bit hard to keep up with the show at times, owing as much to the sheer volume of names covered as to Gambino’s thick Sicilian (one assumes) accent. Strung together by Gambino’s narration, the show smacks more of the Berlin/Wall David-Hare-investigates type of theatre than it does of ‘traditional’ drama. Those looking for domestic disputes, plot twists and character arcs may be disappointed. However, despite the lack of a traditional cohesive narrative, there is a sort of arc to the evening. A great deal of the evening’s coherence owes itself to Gambino’s riveting characterization and Gabriel Zagni (video design) and Cherry Truluck’s (design) vision. With a scrim, a projector and a chair, the designers manage to create haunting images, among them a functioning doorway, a courtroom and an expressionistic palette that chronicles the mob characters’ journey from men to animals and back to human beings in the audience’s mind. Notable were two mesmerising moments. At one point, a saint dances within Bollini’s white gowns. Blood later drips down the same gowns, a projection trick that was unsettlingly real. Both of these images call to mind a story early on in the show where the initiation ceremony into the mafia is described: signing a paper saint in blood, then passing it between both hands as it burns. Zagni’s and Truluck’s ingenious projections, which also include costumes that the characters ‘step into,’ give the evening the feeling of a broad canvas and some much-needed unity. With the precision of a mimic, Michael Gambino’s virtuosic embodiment of various mob characters alone justifies the ticket price. Bollini gives the mob wives she plays a piercing, ferocious loyalty and a rigid grace. She’s also the subject some of the most stunning images in the show. But her vignettes are few and far between. At sixty minutes, Ruggiero delivers a show that rivets at times and doesn’t overstay its welcome. It doesn’t turn on the axis of a traditional narrative, but the show achieves its purpose: it gives a real sense of what it means to be a part of the intensely family-oriented ‘society of honour;’ and it shows what it meant not to be when the mafia emerged in the small towns of Sicily to ‘protect from oppression.’ With haunting imagery, compelling performances and unsettling candour, at the moment Words of Honour is Sicily’s finest family show. Just not in the way you think.
Until 3 October Box office: 020 7287 2875 Tickets: £10
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ary Couzens