Le Volpi

a play by Lucia Franchi, Luca Ricci
with Giorgio Colangeli, Manuela Mandracchia (Antonella Attili), Federica Ombrato (Luisa Merloni)
costumes Marina Schindler
sound design Michele Boreggi, Lorenzo Danesin
light design Stefan Schweitzer
technician Piero Ercolani
administration Riccardo Rossi
organisation and distribution Giulia Randellini
press office Maria Gabriella Mansi
photo Luca Del Pia, Elisa Nocentini
set design and direction Luca Ricci
production CapoTrave-Infinito Srl

The show was part of the trio of finalists nominated for the 2024 Ubu Awards in the category ‘new Italian text/dramaturgic writing’.

In the shade of a living room, at coffee time on a sunny August Sunday, two notables of the place and the daughter of one of them meet together. All around, thoughts are already flying to the seaside and vacations, but some businesses remain to put in order.
Over a tray of vegan cookies, reasonable appetites and natural interests are confessed, agreements are made and dissolved. Favours and concessions, appointments and supposed advantages are regulated in order to assign them in the best way.
The Italian province is the real protagonist of the story: a microcosm for observing the dynamics of power, which have to do always with human beings’ desires and obsessions. Slightly, you slip on a process of absolving yourself and you reserve the right to obtain your little personal advantages, especially after your presumed big commitments in the public management.
Corruption is precisely this: granting yourself the possibility of an imperceptible exception. As Leonardo Sciascia writes in his novel “Todo Modo”: “Big gains make big principles disappear, small gains make small fanaticisms disappear.”

Giorgio Colangeli is one of the most popular and favourite actors in Italian auteur cinema: he won the Nastro d’Argento, in 1999, for “La cena” by Ettore Sola and the David di Donatello, in 2007, for “L’aria salata” by Alessandro Angelini. He played the role of Salvo Lima in Paolo Sorrentino’s “Il divo” and worked with directors Rubini, Muccino, Luchetti, Genovese, among many others. In theatre he has recently played Pope Ratzinger in Anthony McCarten’s “The Two Popes.”

Manuela Mandracchia is one of the most successful actress in Italian theater, who played in the historic productions by Luca Ronconi and Massimo Castri, winner of the Ubu Award (2 times), the ANCT Award of the Association of Theater Critics and Le Maschere del Teatro Italiano Award. For cinema she worked in Nanni Moretti’s “Habemus Papam,” as well as with Cristina Comencini, Francesca Archibugi, Marco Bellocchio and, recently, with Pietro Castellitto. For Radio Rai 3 she has read numerous literary classics in the program “Ad alta voce”..

Federica Ombrato graduated as an actress, in 2011, from the Nico Pepe Academy in Udine and specialized with Compagnia Atir and S. Sinigaglia. She made her debut with “La Mosca, almeno un milione di scale” by C. Tessiore, directed by Jean-Paul Denizon. She worked with C. Rifici, L. Lidi, M. Maccieri, A. Ruozzi, G. Dall’Aglio and G. Cărbunariu, among others. She made her film debut, directed by Marco Bellocchio, in “Se posso permettermi” selected by the 74th Locarno Festival Corti d’autore.