PRESS REVIEW

Simone Nebbia, Nostalgia di café chantant
Nucleo Art-zine, Fanny & Alexander | Kriminal Tango
Alex Giuzio, Kriminal Tango by Fanny & Alexander. Postcard from Ravenna
Ilenia Carrone, L’uomo dal whisky facile
Maria Grazia Gregori, La vita in trincea è un tango kriminale
Gianfranco Capitta, Buscaglione fra visioni e fantasmi

Fanny & Alexander. Nostalgia di café chantant by Simone Nebbia, Teatro e Critica, November 25, 2015

There are places that embody transformation. Transformation of those who frequent them and of the place itself. These are the settings destined for the creation and dissemination of art, which harbor within them some lost seed in solitary artists, nurture it through contact with other subtle solitudes, and eventually express it in some form that can reach a listening perspective. These are fertile cradles capable of making two seemingly contrasting moments coexist: on one side, intention, and on the other, dedication to the world, the dispersion of the offer within the community. Community, precisely. Because the common denominator for each of them is an attention to something that is losing step with the large social stages: the sense of minute relationships, what makes one person close to and a mark of another.

It is for this reason that the feeling of presence in a place like Angelo Mai, one of the most battered social spaces in Rome, almost the only one to resist in a certainly mutilated but reactive and concrete form, still surprises. A form that is only allowed by dedicating oneself to art.

After a journey into the first cold of the coming winter, it remains an intense experience to take those few steps inside and feel the body slowly relax, unbuttoning against the hostile climate and finding another, gentle, vital one. A café chantant hall, with a few tables and chairs in a darkness thickened by dense dialogues and anticipation. This is the space designed by Fanny & Alexander – the Ravenna-based company known for its great experimental spirit in recent decades and one that has never stopped engaging with this space – to host Kriminal Tango, a grand tribute to the king of Italian swing in the 1950s, the performer and, yes, entertainer: Fred Buscaglione (the tribute was premiered by Radio 3 for Tutto Esaurito!).

If Chiara Lagani and Luigi De Angelis – Fanny & Alexander – had accustomed us to dizzying experiments where meaning was hidden in a technical (and technological) compression of a certainly conceptual nature, now we find ourselves facing an apparent concession to representational playfulness. Yet, even in this case, what makes the difference is a crystalline formal cleanliness, truly fascinating for its adherence to a refined texture of environmental creation, in which the music of the local Orchestrina Bluemotion (piano and Mellotron by Andrea Pesce; double bass by Francesco Redig de Campos; drums by Cristiano De Fabritiis) fits well, but above all, the vocal and interpretative verve of Marco Cavalcoli, who confirms himself in a way so distant from his more familiar roles as one of the most significant actors in the Italian experimental scene. Therefore, just as years ago he amazed with his mathematical interpretation in Him, in this case, his versatility and transformational gift develop on a parallel level, revealing that the boundaries of mimesis are more blurred than we think.

The suggestion of being in the audience, where Lagani herself, dressed in a ballroom gown, moves about collecting donations with a hat and serving a standard whiskey, is charged with the feeling that the same characters evoked by the songs sit here, just like then: gangsters, tough guys, and dames, irresistible lovers, return like a black-and-white film rolled out before our eyes and follow a montage that fragments the songs into a sensitive collage, allowing these characters to infuse the figure of Buscaglione himself, as discussed as much as loved. Precisely for this short circuit between the “character” and the related “characters” he brings to life, when one is able to overcome the prejudice of a habitual observer who climbs onto their expectations, the experiment that reduces the mechanism of translation, intimately theatrical, mimetic, leaves no residue: one sees where one listens and no longer perceives the cold; the foot slowly begins to tap the floor, and the evening, the room, come alive with a constantly renewed possibility, that one can be in a space feeling its transformation on the skin. And thus, amplifying the value of cleanliness and technical precision, impeccable even in the most complicit of games, it seems so easy that through a warehouse, one finds themselves in a music hall, or that by passing through a secret hideaway saved from decay, one reaches a sparkling and refined café chantant. Our appearances will be many; in a thousand ways we will transform, but in a thousand ways we will return to make a place of our desires.

Fanny & Alexander | Kriminal Tango by Nucleo Art-zine (Editorial Staff), November 21, 2015

While it is easy to pay tribute to commercial theater and weave a discourse that holds (or claims to hold) the threads of a historical narrative, theater of the attempt, of the process that escapes the product, is mysterious land. It stages an alternative hypothesis to the packaging of dramaturgy and representation, a radical vision.

Well, Kriminal Tango by Fanny & Alexander wins the challenge against the cultural industry by returning the adherence between the creative process and its presentation to the audience, who is truly involved in the spectacular framework, thus shattered. The frame corresponds to the content, and the nightclub atmosphere where chansonnier like Fred Buscaglione once performed is recreated without force or caricature. A work of high craftsmanship, the concert/performance by the Ravenna-based group is indeed truly “criminal,” a sort of theatrical Robin Hood that presents an hour and a half of great acting by Marco Cavalcoli without pretending to represent a virtuous pirouette or a tragic story (often badly written).

This work, which should be paired with the Scrooge show, in which the experiment leading to the Discorso Verde on Economics is underway, Kriminal Tango is an experience, an atmosphere that makes obsessive redundancy its strength. A nearly continuous succession of nothing but musical numbers (with brief spoken interludes), performed live by the Orchestrina Blue Motion and Cavalcoli, who embodies Fred Buscaglione (with moments detached from the “fatal man” Silvio Berlusconi), holding a whiskey bottle, cigar, and gun in hand.

The poetics are already in the lyrics, in fact: the poetics lie in the very choice of the container through which to communicate it. Inserting the audience into an improvised ballroom, among colored lights and a large mirrored ball, offering them drinks and asking for donations with a top hat in hand (Chiara Lagani performs these actions), constitutes a powerful statement that firmly claims the right of those who make theater to experiment, with impeccable precision. There is no mediation of dramatic text, no demands for culinary theater (to quote Brecht) or pseudo-intellectual overthinking; every medium is shattered, as is any abuse of technology. Luigi De Angelis’ direction faithfully presents a 1950s ballroom where people go to drink and drown their disappointments, loves, and loneliness.

“Do we drink to forget or to remember?” asks Buscaglione/Cavalcoli. It seems the answer is: to remember. A society now dead, where in a period of economic success, the figure of the chansonnier existed, consumed more than his audience by his own passions. And after that, what happened? The character created by Fanny & Alexander turns out to be a prismatic synthesis of more clichés and attitudes reunited and evoked through the re-presentation of a dream of passion and criminality, faithful and unfaithful, magnetic and corroded by too much alcohol, too much smoke, too many women, too much life. Between the fascination with money, the ambivalence between wealth and stinginess, power and ruin, we await the future Discorso Verde, after the two “studies,” different in aesthetics but connected.

Kriminal Tango by Fanny & Alexander. Postcard from Ravenna, by Alex Giuzio, altrevelocita.it, August 3, 2015

It’s July 18th, and we find ourselves at the festival along the Ravenna dock that the municipal administration has organized to celebrate the title of Italian Capital of Culture. A popular festival with concerts, food stalls, exhibitions, and performances set in an intriguing, unused industrial area of the city. The exception is Almagià, an old sulfur refinery that has been reborn as a space to host theater and dance research born or passing through Ravenna, where tonight the latest productions of Tanti Cosi Progetti, Menoventi, gruppo nanou, and Fanny & Alexander will take place. Free entry performances: on such a crowded evening, it’s guaranteed that the audience will be as diverse, curious, and potentially indifferent as possible; an intriguing situation for Kriminal Tango by Fanny & Alexander, especially when many elderly people and families with children walk into Almagià.

At the entrance, we notice a small orchestra on stage – the Bluemotion of Angelo Mai – in a retro café setting, with high lights, scattered tables and chairs, and an open bar. Marco Cavalcoli enters the scene in the guise of Fred Buscaglione. The music starts, and the actor begins to sing some of the most famous hits of one of Italy’s first popstars, entertaining the audience who applauds, hums along, and in some cases can’t help but dance in their seats. Cavalcoli’s resemblance to Buscaglione is striking, and so is his voice, as the talented Fanny & Alexander actor delivers a captivating vocal performance. But already, with the revolver that Cavalcoli occasionally pulls out in a chilling manner, we can sense that we are about to be taken into one of those disorienting tunnels typical of many performances by the company. Cavalcoli, joking with the audience and playing on the American gangster imagery of Fred’s songs, emphasizes the vanity of the rich, self-important male – the reckless womanizer who smokes cigars and flaunts dollar bills carelessly. He celebrates himself, exalts, flirts. “I like, I like, I like,” he sings, occasionally changing his voice to imitate Berlusconi, putting before us the contradictory emblem of the arrogant, greedy male, typical not only of stars and executives from both yesterday and today, but also of the egoism and narcissism of our selfie age.

Then comes the nightmare: halfway through the show, Cavalcoli-Buscaglione launches into an endless song that soon ends the carefree enjoyment of the audience. A delirious medley of Italy’s greatest hits that lasts over half an hour, trapping us. We are inside the eternal notes of the seaside piano bars, those that seem to end but restart every time, just like Buscaglione who doesn’t stop singing, tireless. Vanity turns into discomfort in what ultimately becomes a very sharp work by Fanny & Alexander: beyond the superficial level of surrendering to the cabaret entertainment, the audience is transported into a deeper and more paranoid prison, and in doing so, the company maintains its stylistic and rhetorical approach, using the dramaturgy of sentences (and in this case, songs) taken from reality to show its most viral and unsettling side.

Kriminal Tango is a step toward the upcoming Discorso Verde, focused on prodigality and greed. The company looks at Fred Buscaglione, one of the first media figures in Italy’s post-war economic boom, in parallel with Berlusconi, highlighting how the “decade of the self” (the 1970s for Tom Wolfe) has transformed into an era of perpetual ego invasion and degeneration of the self.

The Man with the Easy Whiskey, by Ilenia Carrone, Doppiozero, June 18, 2015

Kriminal Tango by Fanny & Alexander was met with great curiosity, a concert/recital previewing Discorso Verde, the fourth stop in the DISCORSI project, dedicated to the theme of economics. On stage at the memorable Le Roi Music Hall, an exceptional Marco Cavalcoli performs as the always captivating Fred Buscaglione (whom we find here exactly where he used to perform). It’s not just the striking physical resemblance; it’s the detailed study of the character that amazes, from his movements and gaze to his ability to command the stage and make it a unique experience. Accompanied by the Bluemotion Orchestra – made up for this occasion by Andrea Pesce, Francesco Redig de Campos, and Cristiano De Fabritiis – Cavalcoli/Buscaglione leads us through a unique selection from the repertoire into a world where the imagery of the old-time showman is reimagined. Easy whiskey, a revolver in the pocket, dreams of America, attachment to money, its absence, the constant need for it. But there also emerges a certain bully attitude and endless pleasure in being liked, the charm on women and “dolls” (Chiara Lagani is the “doll,” dressed in evening wear and high heels; she passes through the audience collecting change and offering whiskey). This concert combines many dramaturgical levels, making the entire performance immensely valuable: not least the special arrangements of the chosen songs and, above all, the actor’s singing ability (who would have expected it?). After a more straightforward performance, the repertoire starts repeating in a more confusing way, like a broken juke-box. Words turn into commas of madness; the protagonist’s reminiscences of past performances emerge, revisiting roles that are harder to shake off because they are more present and relevant than one would think. Thus, Cavalcoli/Buscaglione revisits Berlusconi, the character he brought to life in Discorso Grigio, and the question arises: could the young Berlusconi have escaped a similarly hypertrophic Buscaglione? Could he have been this brash? This much of a constant refrain?

Life in the Trenches is a Kriminal Tango, by Maria Grazia Gregori, delteatro.it, June 14, 2015

The surprising Kriminal Tango by Fanny & Alexander on Fred Buscaglione, Trincea by Marco Baliani on World War I, and Giro di vite by Henry James, reinterpreted by Valter Malosti, celebrate in the best way the twentieth anniversary of the festival of the Colline Torinesi.

It’s June, it’s time for the Colline Torinesi festival, the fierce Piedmontese festival that, year after year (and now celebrating twenty years), has been presenting its audience with an image of theater, not only Italian, in motion, taking on risks that have almost always paid off. The twentieth anniversary of the festival, led by Sergio Ariotti and Isabella Lagattolla, is built around different lines of research and work, supported by a curious and attentive audience that has grown over the years. In these difficult times, it proposes new languages and paths with a non-defeatist, but rather determined and open approach to the future of theater, ensuring a few surprises, perhaps unexpected. For example, Kriminal Tango by the Ravenna group Fanny & Alexander is a breath of fresh air for the character it’s built around, the clever dramaturgical game supporting it, and most of all, the skill of its performer, Marco Cavalcoli.

The character around which Kriminal Tango revolves is that of Fred Buscaglione, a legendary hero of the gritty Sixties nightclub scene, an innovator, with his fantastic lyricist Leo Chiosso, who provided him with fantastic stories for songs that went against fake romance and sentimentality with overwhelming irony, rhythms inspired by America, yet exalting right there, in the very place where the performance took place, the Le Roi Music Hall (formerly Lutrario), built by architect Carlo Mollino in 1959 and miraculously remaining identical. The small sofas and tables, the beautiful balcony, and colorful, cylindrical lamps hanging from the ceiling illuminated the space.

It was on that stage that “Fred with the easy whiskey” (but he liked gin too) began his glory, someone who wanted to go to America but, meanwhile, honed his style in Torino with his band, the Asternovas, singing songs that were real tales of bullies and dolls, women dreaming of fur coats, bar guys with cigars and hats, soft-hearted criminals, vengeful women with guns, all playfully mocking the young, womanizing gentlemen and the sentimental fathers singing lullabies to their children, all with a smile full of invention. Fred Buscaglione, tough and pure.

On stage, Marco Cavalcoli, made up “like Buscaglione,” with a notable resemblance (skinny) to the legendary Fred, accompanied by the Bluemotion band, proves irresistible in charm and as a singer we didn’t expect. With the help of the alluring and unexpected Chiara Lagani, playing a siren in high heels (the show is written by her and Luigi De Angelis), who walks among the tables collecting money and offering drinks, they create a wild and entertaining story, a mocking reflection on society then and not far from today, where robbery is no longer imaginary or romantic, but brutally real, playing with words, mixing motifs and songs, where, if we look closely, the true protagonist is money itself. This is the first step in the group’s upcoming exploration of different languages used in mass communication.