Filippo Timi can be excellent, so he shouldn’t be anything less: Romeo and Juliet in Milan

What to think of Fil­ippo Timi?

After the extraordin­ary suc­cess of his Amleto² (Ham­let squared) comes Giuli­ett’ e Romeo (a loose adapt­a­tion of Romeo and Juliet). There are just five char­ac­ters: the Nurse, Romeo, Juliet,  Mer­cu­tio and Cupid. Yes Cupid — it’s a very loose adaptation.

As Cupid, Timi comes on as though Jason Bieber had been styled by Pierre et Gilles, with blonde wig (cue ref­er­ences to Italian singer/dancer/gay icon, Raf­faella Carrà) and rose-tinted glasses who, between shoot­ing clouds of red paper hearts into the air, mimes to Massimo Ranieri’s 60s hit Se bru­ciasse la città.

Timi appeared to have been plucked from a hol­i­day vil­lage enter­tain­ment, but his faith­ful fans nev­er­the­less rewar­ded him with shrieks, over-the-head applaud­ing, and hys­ter­ical laughter. Rather like the OTT reac­tions of friends of the tour­ist who gets up on stage in an ill-fitting cos­tume at a hol­i­day vil­lage, I sup­pose. Four-minutes of Ranieri later, Timi star­ted corpsing, laugh­ing at his own jokes, and pro­du­cing all those other tics he has, which can be ador­able when everything else is dis­cip­lined and impress­ive. It wasn’t. It just looked as though he hadn’t had enough time to rehearse. The ‘play’ las­ted an hour.

The funny and mov­ing Amleto², and the pro­voc­at­ive Favola (which is at Teatro Franco Par­enti from next week) are rich theatre pieces, crammed full of ideas. Impov­er­ished Giuli­ett’ e Romeo  is feeble by com­par­ison, even with the efforts of the four excel­lent act­ors who share the stage with Timi, and make the most of their material.

Timi’s reg­u­lar stage com­pan­ion, who is in all three of the cur­rent run of plays, is Lucia Mas­cino who plays the vul­gar earth-motherly nurse with bravura. She is one of the finest act­ors on the Italian stage. Luca Rondolini and Vit­toria Chi­ac­chi­ella play the vapid cent­ral couple who giggle and blush together, and man­age to get every nuance out of their lines. Fruity-voiced Mauro F. Car­din­ali plays a middle-aged Mer­cu­tio who, after Cupid fires his little hearts into the sky, falls des­per­ately in love with the nurse, caus­ing his rich bass to  jump up by a couple of octaves. The ideas are there, but they need developing.

So, what to think of Fil­ippo Timi? Well he’s fas­cin­at­ing, and lov­able, and over-flowing with tal­ent, but he needs to be reigned in. He can be excel­lent, so he shouldn’t be any­thing less.

Teatro Franco Par­enti, Milan

26–31 July 2012 - Favola

Share