What a pair
by Maria Angela Baiardi and Fabiola Crudeli
Two women like these don’t usually meet up in a comedy: immature and de (re)pressed for different reasons, they find themselves excluded by the harsh realities of life and by precise “inconstancies” regarding their character and economic and cultural circumstances. Instead of dividing them, these unite them almost symbiotically. Later these inconstancies divide them, maybe forever, until another stroke of fate brings them back together again, this time probably causing a complete reversal of roles.
Written in the style of Feydeau or Courteline, or Neil Simon to quote a contemporary author, “Quelle due come noi”, two titles in one, looks like the prototype of an entertaining comedy, where the comedy of errors is replaced by a lengthy comic situation, brimming with unexpected incidents and scenes that are constantly being undermined by sudden, often unexpected events that refuel the plot creating “surprise” developments.
Punning is used adeptly, while everyday language overlaps with the written word, creating short circuits in the usual meaning of the dialogues. The women’s psychology is completely wiped out by their respective behaviour and by the things they say; they never seem to “listen to themselves”, as if they were both prisoners (and victims) of a much more private and domestic madness.
The action takes place in a single night (maybe the play was written after one of the authors had a “dream”): a door won’t open, they have difficulty recognizing what’s happening, they need to name “things” in order to recognize them. All this suggests an “unreal” adventure that can’t be true, that’s hyperbolic verging on the improbable. Everything conspires to suggest a crazy absurd world marked by paradox, parody, comic dialogue where everything that does not appear real, is actually real, and must be sustained to the bitter end.
