RE CHICCHINELLA

Description

Emma Dante returns to the Ponchielli Theater with the new show Re Chicchinella, adapted from a fairy tale from Lo cunto de li cunti, a wonderful collection of short stories in the Neapolitan language, which Giambattista Basile created in 1634. The protagonist of the story, which mixes grotesque, comic and tragic, it is a king who, seized by a bodily need, makes the tragic mistake of using an animal that he believes to be dead, a hen, to clean his behind… The bird, far from dead, glues itself to his behind and goes back up for the bowels, settling in the interior of the sovereign. The magical animal, like a tapeworm, devours everything the poor man eats, causing him to expel golden eggs. Exhausted by this, the king decides to let himself die of hunger, encountering opposition from the entire court, who does not want to deprive himself of the golden eggs. Emma Dante explains: «Re Chicchinella tells the story of a sick sovereign, alone and without hope, surrounded by an affectionless and icy family who has only one interest, receiving a golden egg a day. The animal lives and feeds inside him, slowly devouring his entrails, until the king discovers that for the world he and the hen are the same thing…»