Year : 2023

Service : Set and lighting design

A project by Federica Fracassi, Fanny & Alexander | Adaptation, Dramaturgy: Chiara Lagani | Direction, Set, Lighting, Video: Luigi De Angelis | With: Federica Fracassi, Andrea Argentieri, Consuelo Battiston, Alessandro Berti, Lorenzo Gleijeses | Costumes: Gianluca Sbicca | Music, Sound Design: Mirto Baliani, Emanuele Wiltsch Barberio | Multimedia Set-up: Michele Mescalchin | Stage Sculpture: Nicola Fagnani | With video participation of: Leone Maria Baiocco, Andrea Bezziccheri, Fausto Cabra, Giada Ciabini, Vittorio Consoli, Anna Coppola, Alfonso De Vreese, Ion Donà, Federica Fracassi, Giovanni Franzoni, Domenico Iodice, Chiara Lagani, Nicolò Latte Bovio, Marta Malvestiti, Mauro Milone, Yari Montemagno, Cloe Romano, Nina Romano, Edoardo Sabato, Renato Sarti, Lorenzo Vio | And the voices of: Chandra Livia Candiani, Virginia Consoli, Vittorio Consoli, Chiara Lagani, Renzo Martinelli, Woody Neri | Assistant Director: Filippo Trevisan | Costume Assistant: Marta Solari | Subtitles by: Prescott Studio | Multimedia Support for Subtitles: Lyri | Production: Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa

A dark fairy tale. A familial hell, everyday and impossible, concrete and abstract, degraded and noble, cruel and innocent. In the refined play of dualities, a foreigner plunges us into the abyss of a ruined childhood. A story that suddenly becomes hard to believe.

“In the beginning, there was language. And language was one. Objects, things, feelings, colors, dreams, letters, books, newspapers, were all language. I never imagined that another language could exist, that a human being could utter words that I wouldn’t be able to understand. Why would they ever do that? For what reason?” (A. Kristóf)

In an empty circular space, a woman advances. She has a foreign accent. She speaks slowly. She tells a dark fairy tale of innocence and evil. Is it the story of her life?

On a frontier of one of the many wars, two twins are entrusted by their mother to their grandmother, who is an unknown to them, a witch, a murderer. This story speaks of their bond, their trauma, their lies, their loss in the large notebook of a world written in an incomprehensible language. The progressive series of characters that multiply with relentless rhythm takes the form of strange cards: animated panels that translate the scene of the mental theater of the storyteller. The narrative is populated with purity and atrocity, ruined beings described with surgical precision. It is the actions, the small obsessive gestures that define the presences. Four arcane figures, close to the foreigner in the space of the stage, lend their voice and body, little by little and together with her, to all the characters in the story, taking the first steps into the world that the narrative represents: a strange familial hell, simultaneously everyday and impossible, concrete and abstract, degraded and noble, cruel and innocent. In the refined game of dualities, it becomes difficult in the end to believe anyone: everything can always be a lie.

“You can’t explain everything, it’s not good. About exile, about death, about pain, there’s not much to say. They are facts. That’s all.” (A.K.)

Trilogia della città di K. is a project by Federica Fracassi and Fanny & Alexander, based on the novel of the same name by Ágota Kristóf, and produced by the Piccolo Teatro di Milano.

Press Review

ANNA BANDETTINI, IL VENERDÌ di REPUBBLICAENRICO FIORE, CONTROSCENAMICHELE WEISS, LA STAMPASIMONE NEBBIA, TEATRO E CRITICAPAOLO PERAZZOLO, FAMIGLIA CRISTIANAMARIO DE SANTIS, DOPPIOZEROLAURA BEVIONE, ARTRIBUNEMARCO BALZANO, LA LETTURA – CORRIERE DELLA SERAANNA TOSCANO, MINIMA & MORALIAMAGDA POLI, CORRIERE DELLA SERAALESSANDRO STRACUZZI, FERMATA SPETTACOLOANNA BANDETTINI, LA REPUBBLICAMARIO BIANCHI, KLPMADDALENA GIOVANNELLI, IL SOLE 24 ORESERGIO LO GATTO, TEATRO E CRITICANICOLA ARRIGONI, SIPARIOCRISTINA TIRINZONI, LUCE WEBGRAZIANO GRAZIANI, IL TASCABILE

Life, Death, and Lies in the City of K., by Anna Bandettini | Il venerdì di Repubblica, November 17, 2023

“She wrote incredibly well, with a precise, biting, wise, very theatrical language, and it wasn’t even her mother tongue. I immediately fell in love with Ágota Kristóf, and I dove straight into her powerful novel, the story of twin children, Lucas and Klaus, who may be one person, abandoned by their mother, entrusted to a terrible grandmother amid bombs, war, and poverty… a novel that is a black fairy tale, a coming-of-age story, a dream, a real history of the twentieth century, and much more. As I read Trilogia della città di K., I thought ‘this is made for the theater.’”

Actress Federica Fracassi, one of the finest on the Italian stage, shares her excitement. It is she who, with determination, involved directors Luigi De Angelis and Chiara Lagani, known as Fanny & Alexander, for the adaptation and dramaturgy, found the production support of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano, and now, on November 23, they will debut together at the Studio Melato theater. It is a small event, as this will be the first Italian staging of Trilogia della città di K., the masterpiece of the Hungarian-born, Swiss naturalized writer. The trilogy consists of three books (Il grande quaderno from 1986, La prova from 1988, and La terza menzogna from 1991, all by Einaudi), dozens of characters, locations, and a load of life, destruction, affection and abuse, rifts and scars, people and identities, truths and lies. “It’s a matryoshka, a labyrinth,” explains Chiara Lagani, an actress increasingly skilled in theatrical adaptations and dramaturgies. “Kristóf’s novel is a diabolical scattering of deceptive traces, splitting planes that take away from the viewer, as much as the reader, the ground beneath their feet. We worked on the text’s enigmatic nature, aware, especially after traveling through her places in Hungary, of how tightly connected and urgent the relationship between invention and reality is for her.”

A delicate balance between fiction and truth will also manifest in the representation. “Especially in the first part, split between theater and cinema. Twenty-one screens move through the stage space, like the cards of a video-atlas representing the various characters,” explains director Luigi De Angelis, who also worked with two casts: one on stage, featuring Federica Fracassi, Andrea Argentieri, Consuelo Battiston, Alessandro Berti, Lorenzo Gleijeses, and the other in video, which includes Anna Coppola, Fausto Cabra, Renato Sarti, Giovanni Ranzoni, and many more. “In the second part, we’ll return to a more theatrical dimension,” continues De Angelis, “somewhat like Dogville by von Trier, until the third part, which will blend everything—cinema, theater, reality, invention—into a dreamlike dimension, as it is in the novel.” To further confuse things, there will be Ágota Kristóf herself, “summoned before the audience” in the first act, among her characters, to introduce the narrative that will then shift to Lucas. And it is Federica Fracassi, with her wild black hair, glasses, and unsettling face beneath an innocent appearance, who will portray her. Stunning in her resemblance, she will seem like another trick of Ágota’s.

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In the City of K., the Word War is the War, by Enrico Fiore | Controscena, November 24, 2023

MILAN — “I still haven’t found the word to describe what happened to us. I could say drama, tragedy, catastrophe, but in my head, I just call it ‘the thing’ for which there’s no word.”

That, I’d say, is the key phrase of Trilogia della città di K., the novel by Ágota Kristóf, now on stage at the Teatro Studio Melato in a production by Piccolo Teatro, based on a project by Federica Fracassi and Fanny & Alexander, with the adaptation by Chiara Lagani and direction by Luigi De Angelis. As is well-known, the novel is divided into three parts: Il grande quaderno (1986), La prova (1988), and La terza menzogna (1991). In it, the Hungarian-born writer tells the story of twin brothers Lucas and Klaus, set against the backdrop of World War II, concentration camps, the People’s Republic of Hungary proclaimed in 1949 under Soviet influence, the revolution that began on October 23, 1956, the invasion by the Red Army, and the transition to Western economic and political models following the collapse of the USSR, leaving behind thousands of dead, hunger, confusion, and the draining of consciences, all amid the harshening of human relations. But, as in the passage quoted at the beginning, none of this—neither places nor events—are ever named in Trilogia della città di K. This is the extraordinary power of Kristóf’s novel. These places and events, without being embalmed into an “anagraphic” form, hit us in the brain and heart with the heartbreaking power of dreams and delirium. This brings us to the central problem raised in the story.

This is best framed in two passages from pages 26 and 27 of the Einaudi edition, where Lucas and Klaus, entrusted by their mother to their grandmother, lay out the criteria for their diary, which is not coincidentally called the grande quaderno (great notebook)—a clear metaphor for life. The first says: “[…] we have a very simple rule: the theme must be true. We must describe what we see, what we feel, what we do. For example, it’s forbidden to write ‘Grandma looks like a witch,’ but it’s allowed to write ‘People call Grandma the witch’”; and the second observes: “Words that define feelings are very vague; it’s better to avoid using them and stick to describing objects, human beings, and oneself, meaning describing facts.”

In short, Trilogia della città di K. highlights the impotence of words and the loss of identity closely connected to them.

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“Trilogy of the City of K.”: When Familial Hell Becomes a Dark Fairy TaleBy Michele Weiss | La Stampa, November 24, 2023

Ágota Kristóf’s masterpiece arrives at Teatro Studio in a project by Fanny&Alexander and Federica Fracassi.

Let’s borrow a famous passage from Dante’s Inferno to review the new, eagerly anticipated play inspired by Ágota Kristóf’s (1935–2011) masterpiece, Trilogy of the City of K. This project, developed by Federica Fracassi and Fanny&Alexander, had its world premiere at Teatro Melato:“Through me, you go to the city of woe; through me, you go into eternal pain; through me, you go among the lost people.”

While Dante had Virgil and faith to guide him through hell, the twins and other protagonists of Kristóf’s work have nothing but themselves—a nebulous and torn humanity, depicted as a “tangle,” an emotional labyrinth where truth and falsehood constantly swap places.

Fanny&Alexander have previously tackled complex, layered texts (like their Rave Foster Wallace), but, like Fracassi, their starting point was the upheaval the text originally caused. It’s almost impossible today to capture the astounding reception of the trilogy, comprised of three novels—The Notebook, The Proof, and The Third Lie—released between 1986 and 1991. Translated into over thirty languages, it became a publishing phenomenon and a modern classic, still revered today.

Revisiting the text reveals its unique power, with a language both simple and meticulously crafted, penetrating the soul and echoing the 20th century’s existentialist despair, triggered by two catastrophic world wars, revolutions, and assorted dictatorships. Kristóf’s trilogy takes us into the heart of the horrors of the “Short 20th Century,” as historian Eric Hobsbawm called it.

Fracassi opens the play as the author herself, recounting the first novel, The Notebook, from a desk. She’s supported by a fascinating design—perhaps inspired by renowned Italian architect Lina Bo Bardi—featuring about fifteen movable rectangular screens that depict the story of twins Claus and Lucas, sent to their grandmother’s home at the outbreak of war. This initial, deeply rooted section is captivating, thanks to the effectiveness of the videos, creating a hypermedia theater where words intertwine with sophisticated video snippets.

In the second part, the screens disappear (returning in the third with different functions), highlighting the twins’ quest for identity after they separate. F&A’s “hetero-directed” acting style shines here: actors enter the stage without knowing their lines, relying on real-time instructions via earpieces. Kudos to the entire cast for their brilliance! On a sparse stage with only a few chairs, a piano playing without a pianist, and a gigantic creature, they create an immaterial dramatic web.

Structured in three parts like the novels it portrays, the trilogy is ambitious and profound. In an era of absolute displacement—Kristóf fled Hungary for Switzerland in 1956—only writing, or in this case theater, offers solace as a unique survival exercise. Yet, the rules of storytelling aren’t linear. The remaining parts of Kristóf’s work explore this complexity: truth is a tangle, the twins may be the same person, and each must find their own truth within the labyrinth of the psyche.

In our age, overwhelmed by the new meta-language of digital communication, Kristóf’s disconcerting masterpiece, echoing Kafka, Benjamin, and surrealism, reminds us that no destiny can heal the original wound or the pervasive sense of loss—even among the most settled city dwellers, living within the same small walls as always.

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The Disturbing Enigma of Ágota Kristóf: Interview with Luigi De AngelisBy Simone Nebbia | Teatro e Critica, November 26, 2023

Fanny & Alexander’s new production, Trilogy of the City of K., adapted from Ágota Kristóf’s novel, premiered at Teatro Studio Melato at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan. In this interview, Luigi De Angelis, the play’s director, explores key themes and ideas from the work. The article also features backstage photos.

The Trilogy of the City of K. is a labyrinth, a complex and layered mechanism that constantly intertwines and separates stories and characters. How does theater—an art form rich in layers—reflect this complexity?

The only way to honor this labyrinthine complexity was to create a dynamic production. First, Chiara Lagani’s adaptation had to transform an introspective, literary voice into an externalized, embodied one. Federica Fracassi, who initially suggested the idea, and I decided to stage all three books because they were conceived as one cohesive work.

Visually, I was inspired by an exhibition at a museum in São Paulo, Brazil, designed by Italian-Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi. The artworks there aren’t arranged hierarchically or chronologically but are suspended in glass frames, floating in a single room. Bo Bardi saw time as nonlinear, similar to Nabokov’s ideas, creating what she called a “wonderful tangle” of coexisting moments. This concept became our guiding image: a single space filled with untitled icons, requiring the audience’s active engagement.

What structure did you give the performance?

In the first act, Federica Fracassi portrays Kristóf herself, grounding the story in autobiographical elements, particularly her exile from Kőszeg, Hungary, to Switzerland. The fragmented narrative of The Notebook unfolds through video “icons,” as if emerging from Kristóf’s imagination. Teatro Studio’s unique layout allowed us to break traditional perspectives, creating a dynamic interplay between screens and stage.

The second act shifts focus to the twins’ identity struggles. After crossing a border and a mine explosion, Kristóf hands her manuscript to the character Lukas, played by Alessandro Berti. This act abandons the videos and instead features Lukas directing a cast to recreate his fragmented family history in the city of K.

The third act emphasizes the labyrinthine nature of the story, echoing the final book’s temporal complexity. It shifts between Klaus and Claus’s perspectives—perhaps the same person—blurring present, memory, and dream. We honored this kaleidoscopic structure with a fluid, dreamlike form. Each act also has distinct soundscapes by Mirto Baliani and Emanuele Wiltsch Barberio, ranging from Bartók’s Mikrokosmos to natural and electronic sounds.

What recurring themes from the novel resonate with Fanny & Alexander’s artistic approach?

Beyond the theme of war, one central motif is the dark fairy tale of abused childhoods. These characters are forced to grow up too soon, inventing their relationship with the adult world. In the second act, we introduce a statue representing Mathias, the deformed child born of incest, symbolizing a childhood that cannot grow. The hyper-realistic statue, inspired by Ron Mueck’s work, evokes an obsessive, haunting presence, voiced by poet Chandra Livia Candiani.

How did working with the Piccolo Teatro influence your process?

It was a deeply collaborative effort. The technical team at Piccolo Teatro showed remarkable dedication—even the sound engineers, seamstresses, and stagehands read the book. This collective commitment made the production a true ensemble creation.

Literature often inspires your work (Nabokov, Baum, T. E. Lawrence, Primo Levi). How does Trilogy fit into this tradition?

We rarely stage traditional plays; literature allows us to journey into different worlds and perspectives. Themes of nonlinear childhoods and violence, as seen in Nabokov’s Ada, recur here. Our recent mimetic portraits (Levi, Nina Simone, Charles Manson) also reflect this, exploring oral narratives and their relevance today.

Primo Levi’s influence is particularly poignant. In If This Is a Man, Levi urgently recites Dante’s Inferno to a fellow prisoner—a powerful act of memory and survival. Similarly, Kristóf’s characters cling to language as a lifeline. Writing this trilogy was Kristóf’s way of preserving her lost homeland, using sparse, telegraphic language born of exile. Despite her belief that literature isn’t redemptive, this act of creation allowed her to keep her childhood alive.

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In the City of K.: The Pain of ChildhoodBy Paolo Perazzolo | Famiglia Cristiana, November 30, 2023

The challenge of staging The Trilogy of the City of K., Hungarian writer Ágota Kristóf’s masterpiece, lies in preserving the text’s raw intensity while conveying its intricate layers of meaning and temporal complexity. The production, spearheaded by Federica Fracassi and brought to life by Fanny & Alexander (with adaptation and dramaturgy by Chiara Lagani and direction by Luigi De Angelis) for the Piccolo Teatro in Milan, rises to and triumphs over this challenge (running at Teatro Studio until December 21).

As in the novel, the story unfolds in three acts. The first centers on the author herself, played by Fracassi, whose words are “amplified” by a series of screen-icons descending from above. These screens enhance the narrative by giving voice to characters and their actions, creating a visually compelling and dramaturgically effective device. This act tells the story of twin brothers sent to live with their maternal grandmother when war breaks out.

The second act follows a more traditional structure, focusing on Lucas (portrayed brilliantly by Alessandro Berti), one of the twins who continues his life alone after Klaus crosses the border into the “other” world. Here, a striking scenic element—a large wooden sculpture representing Mathias, a disabled child born of an abused woman—adds emotional depth. Mathias powerfully symbolizes the theme of violated and denied childhood.

In the third and final part, Lucas attempts to reunite with his brother Klaus, revealing a different version of events. The panels return, this time silently, adding another layer of mystery and poignancy.

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Fanny & Alexander nei doppi di Kristof, di Mario De Santis | Doppiozero, 1 dicembre 2023

I labirinti attraggono per due forze simultanee: quella che conduce al mistero al centro di esso e quella che spinge a uscirne. Per questo il vero labirinto in fondo è semplicemente un bivio.

Basta il doppio a creare una tensione irrisolvibile. Così fa Agota Kristof, con la sua Trilogia della città di K., un dedalo narrativo che ruota intorno alla vicenda di due gemelli, dalla loro infanzia dura, all’età adulta della separazione e poi a un misterioso ritrovarsi. Una storia unica, ma fatta di tre romanzi (Il grande quaderno, La prova e La terza menzogna) autonomi quando uscirono tra il 1987 e il 1991 ma ormai considerati, anche editorialmente, inseparabili (come i gemelli).

Un trittico diventato ora spettacolo teatrale, ideato e fortemente voluto da Federica Fracassi, che parallelamente alla sua attività già notevole di attrice (pluripremiata negli anni, l’ultimo premio è l’Hystrio 2022) ha sempre partecipato a ideazioni e creazioni teatrali, basti ricordare la fondazione e poi la direzione per vent’anni di Teatro – i. “Ho letto la Trilogia a fine anni ’90 – ha detto di recente Fracassi – da allora l’ho tenuta sempre con me, desiderando di portarla in scena prima o poi”. Un desiderio condiviso negli anni scorsi con Chiara Lagani e Luigi De Angelis, ovvero Fanny & Alexander, anche loro con una passione per Kristof e una lunga e acclamata storia di ricerca teatrale che ha praticato spesso l’adattamento di opere narrative.

Lagani e De Angelis hanno curato rispettivamente drammaturgia e regia di questa trasposizione dei tre romanzi che mantiene il titolo einaudiano Trilogia della città di K. e che ha debuttato in prima assoluta il 23 novembre al teatro Sala Melato (dove rimarrà fino al 21 dicembre), prodotto dal Piccolo Teatro di Milano – Teatro d’Europa.

Il compito non era facile, per un romanzo cult, dal forte e indimenticabile timbro letterario (dovuto anche al fatto che Kristof, ungherese fuggita in Svizzera con marito e figlia nel 1956, lo scrisse in francese, nella lingua rimasta per lei sempre straniera se non nemica) e dalla struttura entro la quale si aprono continue digressioni, scatole cinesi narrative, ribaltamenti di verità e anti verità, presenze e fantasmi, sovrapponendo l’immaginato, il sognato e il vissuto. Fracassi, Lagani & De Angelis lo hanno risolto da un lato riprendendo l’esempio di quel che Ronconi dichiarò aver fatto per il suo Pasticciaccio del 1996 (“Ne ho fatto un’edizione teatrale più che un adattamento scenico”) con la scelta di dare rilievo alla scrittura, alle parti descrittive fatte recitare ai vari personaggi.

Dall’altro lato per rendere la polifonia, l’intrico psichico che caratterizza i personaggi di Kristof, F&A hanno attinto al loro stile di scrittura della scena, con l’uso di tecnologie vocali, immagini, musiche, rumori. All’interno dello spazio circolare del Melato, vuoto, con solo una scrivania, tagliato in due da una linea luminosa (che evoca il doppio, le due lingue, i confini, la mente bicamerale) si muovono in presenza cinque attori, ognuno interpretando più personaggi (oltre a Federica Fracassi, ci sono Andrea Argentieri, Consuelo Battiston, Alessandro Berti, Lorenzo Gleijeses). Con loro, anche una ventina di schermi che sospesi nel vuoto, entrano ed escono, calati dall’alto (significativo che a uscire per primi a prendere gli applausi i quattro tecnici addetti al movimento delle corde). Un vero e proprio movimento danzante di video-installazione, all’interno dei quali comparivano lacerti di paesaggi, luoghi, dettagli, flashback ma soprattutto gli altri personaggi, interpretati da altri attori o in qualche caso solo la presenza in video dei loro corpi (a partire dai gemelli sdoppiati digitalmente, e incarnati da Leone Maria Baiocco per l’infanzia e Yari Montemagno per l’adolescenza).

Ne viene fuori una sorta di macchina ariostesca di grande fascino ed efficacia perché restituisce sulla scena l’immaginazione in modo materico, nel salto di linguaggio dalla scrittura al corpo e oltre, rendendo visibile allo spettatore il teatro mentale che il libro crea. Quello della scrittrice innanzitutto, e non a caso la scelta di Lagani è immettere in questa versione teatrale anche il personaggio-autrice, nel primo atto: la stessa Kristof interpretata da Federica Fracassi con una impressionante mimesi fisica e che avvia il racconto, nel dire quel “noi” in prima persona plurale del romanzo, che insieme alla sintassi crea quella prosa che Manganelli definì di “perfetta, innaturale secchezza, una prosa che ha l’andatura di una marionetta omicida”. Uno stile che dà correlativo stilistico alla durezza della vicenda narrata nel primo libro della trilogia: l’abbandono dei gemelli da parte della madre a una nonna crudele e indifferente (in video Anna Coppola). Le apparizioni digitali sono un tratto immaginifico del lampo di una favola nera, ad esempio qui la nonna con le sue risate demoniche. I due ragazzini fanno vita durissima di stenti e autodisciplina, mutano verso un cinismo infantile col quale sopravvivono in un paesaggio spettrale, tra guerra (siamo intorno al 1944), fame, violenze stupri, pedofili. I due gemelli appariranno sempre e solo in doppio video, con doppiaggio da altra voce di bambino (Vittorio Consoli). Qui forse c’è uno dei pochi elementi non convincenti: se la narrazione condotta da Fracassi con leggero accento straniero è adatto al senso di straniamento della prosa di Kristof, non altrettanto efficace l’effetto della voce del bambino che risulta fuori registro, incapace di contenere in sé quella potenza arcana di mondo tremendo che sarebbe necessaria.

Per il resto invece proprio la recitazione adottata nel corso dei tre atti da F&A, secondo il loro metodo dell’eterodirezione, funziona, anche se ovviamente con una partitura narrativa così complessa pesa un po’ sulla dilatazione dei tempi nella seconda parte, già lunga di suo e articolata (gli attori non hanno imparato a memoria il testo, ma lo dicono “in sync”, ascoltandolo da un auricolare letto dalla loro stessa voce). Un effetto al confine dell’antinaturalismo, che contribuisce alla tensione magnetica, sospesa, dello spettacolo. In questa seconda parte, che coincide con il secondo libro, prevalgono gli attori sugli schermi, senza più la presenza di Kristof. Si resta immersi nello sviluppo della vicenda e nella sua complicazione. Narrata prima in terza persona (e sempre gli attori a dire le parti descrittive, di volta in volta che la battuta passa a loro) è la storia di Lucas (Alessandro Berti) il gemello che, stando alla narrazione del primo romanzo, non è fuggito all’estero ma è rimasto nella città di K. Qui sopravvive suonando nelle osterie, vendendo ortaggi al curato (in video Renato Sarti) con cui ingaggia schermaglie psicologiche. Crescendo si lega a Yasmine (Consuelo Battiston), donna raminga a cui impedisce di uccidere il figlio Mathias, che poi crescerà come suo, anche se il bambino svilupperà un rapporto morboso e abnorme. “Il bambino è dappertutto” dice Lucas, è il segnale di un’ossessione e di un trauma che si rivelerà poi nel terzo libro (ma questa abnormità dell’infanzia, è data da una statua enorme, creata da Nicola Fagnani, che raffigura Mathias, accovacciato, che emerge da una botola, come una creatura del sottosuolo). Dal suo interno viene la voce, stavolta qui in modo efficace, una voce bambina che non è di bambina e infatti è quella, inquietante e fragile, della poetessa Chandra Livia Candiani. Si intrecciano i destini di vari personaggi: l’amante di Lucas, la bibliotecaria Clara (Fracassi), il libraio Viktor (Lorenzo Gleijeses), il funzionario di partito Peter (Andrea Argentieri). Sarà poi il suicidio di Mathias e la scomparsa misteriosa di Yasmine a determinare l’improvvisa sparizione di Lucas.

La trilogia della città di K è un “meraviglioso groviglio” scrive nelle note di regia De Angelis, e più si va avanti più cresce, cambiando ancora il punto di vista del narratore, tra prima e terza persona. A Lucas subentra – dopo cinque anni, secondo la vicenda romanzesca – Claus (sempre Berti) che sostiene essere l’altro gemello, fuggito all’estero decenni prima, tornato a K. per cercare proprio il fratello Lucas. Fatica a convincere gli altri, ma a complicare la situazione un rapporto di polizia che decreta il rimpatrio di Claus perché né lui né Lucas sono mai comparsi nei registri della città di K.

Si comprende la passione di Fracassi, Lagani e De Angelis per la Trilogia, perché è anche una strepitosa macchina teatrale (come del resto da sempre il topos dei gemelli) ed è a questo punto che diventa un meccanismo a orologeria (Kristof ha fatto per anni l’operaia in una fabbrica svizzera di orologi) ma inquietante, perché volutamente sghembo eppure esatto, nel passaggio delle voci e delle storie. Una cupa giostra di destini incrociati, un carillon stonato (e tra l’altro sono efficaci anche musiche e ambiente sonoro di Mirto Baliani e Emanuele Wiltsch Barberio, con adeguati contrappunti di accordi ipnotici e qua e là dissonanti).

Prima dello scioglimento finale, al sedicente Claus viene fatto ritrovare un Klaus T. che porta il suo cognome: chi è allora il fratello ricercato? E chi quello che cerca? Forse tutto quel che abbiamo visto era solo quanto immaginato (e scritto) in un romanzo da Lucas che ha cambiato nome una volta all’estero?

Anche Klaus lo ha cambiato, egli è poeta e scrive con lo pseudonimo “Claus Lucas” e scrive in prima persona questa parte della storia. È proprio a questo punto che l’impianto teatrale congegnato da F&A, con mescolanze di carne e digitale, luci e musica, e con lo stesso ingombro fisico degli schermi, che si muovono come spettri che fanno apparire ricordi e flashback, esplode in bellezza, diventando una costellazione o forse un labirinto attorno a un centro che non c’è.

In particolare risulta efficace nella fase finale dello spettacolo, quando Lucas è tormentato da sogni e da sofferenza psichica, cerca di ricostruire la propria storia, che gli appare, grazie anche al gioco di schermi e voci, sempre diversa. E ancora, quando ha finalmente il confronto con un gemello che non vuole averlo come specchio, in una vicinanza che si fa insieme distanza siderale tra i due, acuita dall’effetto maschera indossata da Gleijeses e soprattutto dallo scollamento tra corpo dell’attore che mima la sua parte con la voce registrata di Renzo Martinelli. Una terza parte pienamente compiuta, in cui la Trilogia di Fracassi e Fanny & Alexander diventa una tragedia onirica, kafkiana, ma senza alcun deus ex machina. Una storia che espelle sé stessa, la sua versione omozigote e che culmina nel duello tra i due gemelli dentro il loro castello di narrazioni che pare somigliare a un disegno di Escher. Tutto è esposto ma nulla è dato. Si rompe la linearità di tempi, con la sincronicità anche delle scene, sovrapposte e velocizzate. Emerge così alla fine quello che è può essere anche un senso ulteriore del romanzo, consegnato come un passaggio di testimone proprio al teatro, dal postmoderno narrativo al postdrammatico.

Il teatro come “terza menzogna” e unica possibile verità. Dove possono convivere proprio perché su una scena, le due menzogne gemelle, una che si travasa nell’altro come i passaggi dei quaderni dal primo al terzo atto. Un gemello completerà il manoscritto dell’altro, anche se il loro incontro non sarà riconoscersi come fratelli. Tutta l’operazione Trilogia della città di K. trasferisce nello spettatore l’incubo del romanzo, materializzando gli slittamenti di identità e l’angoscia di possedere, sì, una storia, che pure raccontiamo a noi stessi e sulla quale costruiamo il nostro destino, ma che è una casa con molte porte così come con molte verità. Non resta che accettare che tutte le storie, sia inventate che vere, siano meravigliosi grovigli di menzogne.

Nel portare in scena tutta la complessità del labirinto-Kristof, nel lanciare i frammenti romanzeschi in campo di tensione, lo spettacolo cresce via via, facendo dimenticare le tre ore di durata, si compatta e coinvolge emotivamente nello sgomento: quel che stavamo cercando come verità e risposta all’enigma, di questa vicenda e forse anche nella vita, è basato sulla domanda di una soluzione. Invece esiste una risposta che precede tutte le domande: “Mantieni l’enigma”.

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The Trilogy of the City of K.: A Masterpiece by Ágota Kristóf Arrives on Stage in Milan
By Laura Bevione | Artribune, December 2, 2023

The Piccolo Teatro of Milan’s new production is both daring and ambitious. Director Claudio Longhi welcomed the proposal from actress Federica Fracassi and her collaborators Chiara Lagani and Luigi De Angelis—the renowned Ravenna-based company Fanny & Alexander—to adapt one of the most unsettling works of contemporary European literature for the stage. Published in Italy in 1998, The Trilogy of the City of K. is a dense, complex novel divided into three parts: The Notebook, The Proof, and The Third Lie. Despite its intricate narrative layers and bleak, almost inhuman characters and situations, the work reflects the autobiographical experiences of its author, Hungarian-born Swiss writer Ágota Kristóf (1935-2011). Themes of exile, family breakdown, and the necessity of learning and expressing oneself in a new language—painfully exemplified by Kristóf in her autobiographical essay The Illiterate—form the foundation of a narrative that is both starkly clear and profoundly enigmatic. Chiara Lagani (adaptation) and Luigi De Angelis (direction, set, lighting, and video) successfully capture these complexities on stage.

Structure of the Play

The theatrical adaptation mirrors the novel’s tripartite structure, dividing the performance into three acts. Each act employs a unique dramatic language while maintaining overall cohesion, largely thanks to the expansive stage at the Studio Melato.

First Act: This segment unfolds almost like a film. Fracassi portrays Ágota Kristóf herself—uncannily resembling the author—as she writes at her desk, often with a cigarette in hand. Above her, rectangular screens display images of the characters and scenes she evokes. These video projections (featuring Fausto Cabra, Anna Coppola, Alfonso De Vreese, and others) reflect the author’s inner gaze and creative imagination, drawing from both real experiences and nightmarish visions.

Second Act: The protagonists emerge directly on stage. Federica Fracassi, now playing the librarian Clara, is joined by Andrea Argentieri, Consuelo Battiston, Alessandro Berti, and Lorenzo Gleijeses. This act focuses on Lucas, one of the twins and a central figure in the novel. As an adult, Lucas lives in the city of K., tending his garden and performing in taverns. He takes in a mother and her child—represented by a large, unsettling puppet emerging from a trapdoor—and forms a relationship with Clara. Though seemingly realistic, these events conceal a more abstract, almost dreamlike narrative subtext.

Third Act: Multiple perspectives and languages—both spoken and visual—intertwine, possibly revealing the truth behind Lucas and Klaus’s story. Video screens return, this time without sound, enhancing the sense of ambiguity and complexity.

Performance Techniques and Lina Bo Bardi’s Influence

Luigi De Angelis drew inspiration for the set design—a “forest” of suspended rectangular screens—from the installation created by architect Lina Bo Bardi for the São Paulo Museum of Art. In Bardi’s design, paintings from different eras coexist in a single space, suspended as if floating in midair. Titles are omitted, allowing visitors to engage with the artwork based on their own emotional impulses. Similarly, theatergoers at the Studio Melato can choose which screen to follow, creating a dynamic viewing experience. This visual fluidity extends to the second and third acts, where actors move freely across the stage, evoking different settings with minimal props, such as a simple chair.

Fanny & Alexander’s distinctive performance technique, known as “heterodirection”—where actors receive their lines and movements through earpieces during the performance rather than memorizing them—further accentuates the novel’s resistance to conventional realism.

The production, conceived by Federica Fracassi and developed with Lagani and De Angelis, faithfully recreates the troubled universe of Ágota Kristóf. Kristóf’s writing acknowledges that imagination cannot heal life’s wounds but can name and objectify fears and nightmares. Similarly, the play does not offer comfort but allows audiences to confront their inner ghosts, much like the author herself.

The show runs until December 21, 2023.

From the City of K. Rises the Cry of War
By Marco Balzano | La Lettura – Corriere della Sera, December 3, 2023

On November 25th, I attended The Trilogy of the City of K. at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro. That morning, I had skimmed through the newspaper, reading updates on the Middle East conflict—while news on Ukraine appeared only in small sections within the inner pages—and new details about the tragic case of Giulia Cecchettin. Later, I joined the Milan demonstration against violence toward women, where a large crowd filled Largo Cairoli. In the evening, I watched the play. I mention this because The Trilogy is an intense experience that, with the unique power of theater, plunges you directly into the vortex of war and violence.

I have never reread Ágota Kristóf’s masterpiece due to the overwhelming violence on every page, especially in the first part. It’s an extraordinary novel with sharp writing and a relentless pace, which always conveyed a sense of claustrophobia and profoundly unsettled me, as great literature should. No other work makes me think so deeply about war, producing one of the most sublime cathartic effects: confronting evil to foster a desire to reject it. Without war, the entire story would lose its meaning. The continuous, insistent, and disturbing relationship with violence—inflicted indiscriminately on children, women, and men—is central. The novel dwells on broken bodies, lingers on corpses, and distorts emotional, familial, and sexual relationships. War is the source of all horrors, legitimizing them, normalizing them, and preventing trauma recovery.

The production’s first merit lies in renewing the desire to engage with Kristóf’s text, a pivotal 20th-century work that still demands reflection, especially in times like ours. Additionally, the play’s many scenic and dramaturgical strengths deserve mention. Claudio Longhi’s focus on literary adaptations marks a significant development for this theater. Federica Fracassi had long aspired to stage Kristóf’s work, and her performance—filled with talent and authenticity—reaffirms her stature in the national theater scene.

In this complex project, she collaborated closely with Fanny & Alexander, resulting in a thoroughly contemporary production. Fracassi sits beneath a screen depicting Ágota Kristóf in her later years, her makeup creating an uncanny resemblance. Like a bard, she breathes life into characters, who gradually descend from animated panels close to the audience. Kristóf becomes both the narrator and a spectator of her own creation, her words igniting the characters’ lives and memories.

The narrative unfolds with the father going off to war, the mother leaving the twins with their grandmother, and the inseparable twins finding ways to survive through physical exercise and writing. Among the projected faces, familiar ones like Renato Sarti as the priest can be recognized. Chiara Lagani’s adaptation skillfully balances fidelity to the novel with contextual innovation. Luigi De Angelis’s direction equally distributes the three parts—The Notebook, The Proof, and The Third Lie—ensuring a unified experience.

The plot follows the novel’s trajectory, with a few inevitable ellipses but maintaining the same relentless rhythm. Tragedies cascade one after another, animated panels rise and fall, and the twins’ faces mature from childhood to adulthood. Similarly, the grandmother’s face—who calls them “sons of bitches” but ultimately loves them—grows more wrinkled and witch-like.

At this point, the actors enter the scene. Alessandro Berti, portraying both Lucas and Klaus, shoulders significant parts of the story with remarkable voice and posture shifts. This transition removes Fracassi-Kristóf and her desk, passing the narrative baton to the actors. This dramaturgical mechanism’s power lies in its ability to evoke gestures, focusing on emotionally charged performances. For example, Fracassi’s portrayal of Clara, the librarian who bans the books Lucas wants to read, encapsulates her illness, desperate desire, and grief for her late husband, Thomas, in a raw, carnal expression of pain and unfulfilled release.

In the final part, the entire story is cast into doubt. Events may have different causes, and characters might not be who they seem: the grandmother could be just an old woman in the city; Lucas might be Klaus and vice versa. This desolate world, ravaged by war, may not even represent a specific Eastern European city under dictatorship, though the looming shadow of a regime that demands obedience and suppresses thought remains.

In this ending, the story takes on an almost metaphysical dimension, highlighted by panels of deep, murky blue and intense, warm lighting that makes the audience squint. It feels like entering an otherworldly, fable-like realm where the soul’s pain persists. This suffering echoes in every place where war continues.

Fanny & Alexander and The Trilogy of the City of K. at Piccolo Teatro
By Anna Toscano | Minima & Moralia, December 5, 2023

The Trilogy of the City of K. is on stage at the Piccolo Teatro until December 21st, hosted in the Teatro Studio Melato, which warmly embraces the production conceived by actress Federica Fracassi and realized with the collective Fanny & Alexander, composed of Chiara Lagani and Luigi De Angelis.

The play is based on the eponymous book by Ágota Kristóf, first published in its complete edition in 1988—a novel comprising three separate but interconnected stories released over different years.

The plot of The Trilogy of the City of K. unfolds through the lives of twin boys growing up in wartime, tracing their journey into adulthood. In the first novel, The Notebook, the twins narrate their story, beginning when their mother takes them from a bombed city to the small town of K. to live with their grandmother. They document their harsh, lonely daily life in a notebook, enduring adversity in a world devoid of affection—the grandmother calls them “sons of bitches”—and growing up in an unrelentingly tough environment. Eventually, the twins are separated when one crosses the border, promising to return.

In the second book, The Proof, we learn the twins are named Lucas and Claus. Lucas remains in the small town, recounting his life while waiting for Claus to return. Many characters appear, all interacting as if emerging from deep solitude, only to encounter others similarly exiled from themselves. In the third novel, The Third Lie, Claus receives a call from Lucas, who has returned to meet him. But questions arise: Who left? Who returned? Are the twins real? What happened to their parents? Which version of the story is true, or could another version be the real one? Kristóf’s narrative continuously shifts perspectives, challenging any sense of linear logic. Each character tells their own truth—a version that may have happened or been reconstructed to shield them from further pain. Memories overlap or brush against each other, their distortions reflecting a mind housed in a hall of mirrors.

Ágota Kristóf poured much of herself into this novel, drawing on events from the early decades of her life. At 21, she fled the Soviet invasion of Hungary with her infant, settling in French-speaking Switzerland, where she remained. Her refugee experience was marked by isolation, social exclusion, and the harshness of factory life. After a long struggle with the French language, she wrote the trilogy, inspired by her children’s school notebooks—fittingly, two child narrators open the first book.

The Teatro Studio Melato’s circular space feels prophetically suited to revive this story. The ingenious decision to open with Ágota Kristóf herself, writing at her desk, emphasizes the inseparable bond between the author’s personal story and the novel’s narrative. Ágota moves slowly across the empty stage, with just a desk and a glowing line dividing the scene. In her signature black bob and glasses, she narrates the story in her own words and through flesh-and-blood characters, as well as animated panels portraying different times and places with gestures, glances, and dialogue.

The first two books form the play’s initial part, featuring four actors (in addition to Federica Fracassi: Andrea Argentieri, Consuelo Battiston, Alessandro Berti, Lorenzo Gleijeses). They embody the twins’ duality and repetition, with recurring tics, images, and objects distilling the narrative into powerful snapshots. Time condenses into a singular macro-story, with each character recounting their truth without altering the inherent falsity.

The dark fable of the abandoned twins raised by a witch-like grandmother in a harsh world merges into a bourgeois family interior, where the horrors of history seep into every life. These “minor” personal horrors mirror larger historical cruelties, akin to being inside La Quinta del Sordo by Philippe Parreno—a video installation animating Goya’s Black Paintings through light, shadow, sound, and vision. Here, madness, nightmares, pain, and violence are embodied in the faces of countless Lucas and Claus figures.

In the second half, the narrative threads intertwine and unravel as the twins meet again—mirrored yet distant, each entrenched in their own pain. This act boldly offers a resolution while presenting an enigma open to individual interpretation.

The exceptional performances, in an almost empty but history-laden space, give shape to an oblique, painful story. Amplifying its impact, the actors recite their lines not from memory but through earpieces relaying their own recorded voices, creating a flowing dialogue enriched by precise gestures and tics. The red thread connecting each character is their profound loneliness, intertwined with others in a quest for humanity—a rare glimpse in this and most other tales.

Ágota Kristóf’s masterful montage of fragmented truths, drawn from her life and reflecting universal human experiences, is faithfully interpreted in this production.

The play concludes as Ágota Kristóf reappears, closing the circle and bidding farewell to her characters, yet leaving the door open for individual interpretation. As she writes, “Not everything can be explained—it’s not healthy. There’s little to say about exile, death, and suffering. They are facts. That’s all.”

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Narrative and Metanarrative in The Trilogy of the City of K.
By Alessandro Stracuzzi | Fermata Spettacolo, December 8, 2023

“The space of the performance, in fact, does not exist. Its physical dimension resides only in the objects that appear on stage.” This is how, in 2002, Luca Ronconi described his work on What Matisse Knew in a conversation with Aldo Viganò. The then-director of the Piccolo Teatro was already known for his tendency to translate texts written for reading into stage performances, but Matisse was a particular case: the childhood of the now elderly protagonist was narrated through the filter of past memories, revealing an incomplete, unstable, and shaky reconstruction.

The theme of narrative partiality and fragmented information also permeates The Trilogy of the City of K., a new production at Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, running at the Teatro Studio Melato until December 21.

Ágota Kristóf’s novel, which serves as the basis for Chiara Lagani’s dramaturgy, closely follows the diverging fates of Lucas and Claus, twin brothers separated as children during World War II. The city of K. is a hellish place where morality is constantly betrayed, and domination and abuse reign supreme. This raw and disturbing story—which encompasses complex themes such as war, violence, and survival—unfolds like a puzzle of events, names, and details, forming a labyrinth of information. The audience must actively piece together an image of the story.

Two thematic lenses seem to emerge in this stage adaptation. On one hand, Luigi De Angelis’s direction emphasizes the concept of limen, or boundary: from the very start and almost throughout the performance, a line of light divides the stage in two. It represents the frontier between the city of K. and the rest of the world, between war zones and lands at peace. It also symbolizes the parallel paths the twins are forced to take.

On the other hand, Lagani’s play seems to explore the potential of narrative itself. With minimal stage action, the story unfolds primarily through narration. In the first part of the trilogy, the characters and locations from Ágota Kristóf’s (played by Federica Fracassi) reconstruction are shown to the audience solely through static video sequences on rectangular screens suspended in mid-air. The filmed imagery, rather than enhancing the illusion, ultimately reveals the fictional nature of the performance. Close-ups of the actors are set against artificial, neutral backgrounds, juxtaposed with real natural environments (trees, flowers, streams, animals). In the second and third acts, the actors’ bodies become the medium of narration. Their acting is estranged and their movements limited, as they systematically announce stage directions.

An experiment in temporal endurance and expansion, the performance immerses the audience in an unusual dimension, alienating them from the portrayed pain. A striking image opens the second act: a gigantic humanoid statue slowly and imperiously rises from a trapdoor. It’s a deformed body, with misaligned shoulders, curled up on itself. This is Matias—nothing more than a child, the shapeless product of the text’s claustrophobic society.

‘The Trilogy of the City of K.’: Ágota Kristóf’s Painful Portrait
By Anna Bandettini | la Repubblica, December 8, 2023

Theater often borrows from literature, sometimes with fatal results. However, for Fanny & Alexander—an esteemed and beloved name in contemporary Italian theater—it’s always a serious, vital endeavor. From their youthful adaptation of Alice by Lewis Carroll to Ada, or Ardor by Nabokov, and their project on The Wizard of Oz, their approach has remained meticulous.

Now, driven by the determination of the talented actress Federica Fracassi and supported by Milan’s Piccolo Teatro, they have embarked on an intriguing and complex adventure. This marks the first Italian staging of Ágota Kristóf’s The Trilogy of the City of K., a bestselling novel from the 1990s with a devoted following. The trilogy recounts the lives of twin brothers, Lucas and Claus, their cruel grandmother, poverty, war, and despair—all unfolding through diverging paths that make the story a coming-of-age narrative, a visionary thriller, an autobiography, and a chronicle of the 20th century.

Directed by Luigi De Angelis with Chiara Lagani’s masterful adaptation, the performance at Teatro Studio—warmly applauded nightly and running until the 21st—creates an intentionally ambiguous theatrical structure. It’s a multifaceted mosaic of theater, cinema, dialogues, and inner voices, perfectly suited to the real and mental journeys that characterize Kristóf’s haunting novel.

The production opens with the first book, featuring about thirty screens that ascend and descend, forming a labyrinth of places and characters. A dedicated on-screen cast (including Anna Coppola, Fausto Cabra, Renato Sarti, and Giovanni Franzoni) brings the first chapter to life. Federica Fracassi, embodying the Hungarian writer Ágota Kristóf, narrates parts of the story live on stage, constructing the tale before the audience’s eyes.

The second book, focusing on Lucas’s life and his mental odyssey, takes a more theatrical and anti-naturalistic approach, with clear nods to Lars von Trier’s Dogville. The final section, depicting Claus’s return, blurs the lines between reality and illusion, as the performance oscillates between cinema and theater.

The actors—Federica Fracassi, Andrea Argentieri, Consuelo Battiston, Alessandro Berti, and Lorenzo Gleijeses—deliver a precise, intense performance, maintaining a deliberate distance from psychological realism. Their actions, gestures, and voices follow a predetermined geometry, executed flawlessly.

Together, they capture the harrowing, extreme portrait of the human condition that resonates throughout Ágota Kristóf’s universe.

‘The Trilogy of the City of K.’: Federica Fracassi and Fanny & Alexander in Kristóf’s Novel
By Mario Bianchi | KLP – Krapp’s Last Post, December 9, 2023

To stage Ágota Kristóf’s The Trilogy of the City of K., one must truly love and understand it deeply. Even recounting its events convincingly is difficult, given the narrative intricacies and shifting perspectives that ultimately reveal the unexpected beneath what seemed straightforward.

Federica Fracassi and Fanny & Alexander (Chiara Lagani, playwright, and Luigi De Angelis, director) evidently have that profound connection. At Milan’s Teatro Studio Melato, they approached the novel’s three parts using distinct theatrical techniques.

The Hungarian writer published the trilogy between 1986 and 1991, creating a dark fable set within a familial hell. The narrative, filled with harrowing episodes, offers no real hope. The fictional city of K reflects Kristóf’s own life: as a young woman, she fled her Soviet-occupied homeland, emigrating to Switzerland with her husband and daughter in 1956.

At the story’s center are twin brothers, Lucas and Claus, whom their mother entrusts to a harsh grandmother in the distant town of K to protect them from the war. The stern, unyielding woman subjects the inseparable boys to grueling labor and physical punishment to toughen them. Meanwhile, the boys record their experiences and encounters in a notebook. The first part ends with their mother’s death in a bombing and their separation: Claus cunningly crosses the border, but the father pays the ultimate price. Later, the audience learns that much of what seemed real was not as it appeared.

In this production, the first part features Federica Fracassi as Ágota Kristóf, writing and narrating The Notebook at a desk. The characters come to life through evocative imagery projected on descending screens of various sizes, filling the circular stage from all directions. This stage, bisected by a luminous line, symbolizes the boundary between truth and imagined reality, inviting the audience to choose their own interpretation. We see the twins grow from children to teenagers (played by Leone Maria Baiocco and Yari Montemagno), alongside characters like the grandmother (Anna Coppola), the priest (Renato Sarti), and the girl with a cleft lip.

The second part, The Proof, adopts a radically different theatrical approach. Here, live actors—Lucas, Yasmine, and Mathias—take center stage. Mathias, born of an incestuous relationship, is represented by a large sculpture emerging from the floor. Lucas (Alessandro Berti) falls in love with Clara (played by Fracassi), cares for Yasmine (Consuelo Battiston), and witnesses Mathias’s tragic suicide. The actors perform in sync with recordings played through earpieces, a signature technique of Fanny & Alexander, creating an anti-naturalistic, suspended atmosphere. Other characters include Viktor the bookseller (Lorenzo Gleijeses) and the grim party official Peter (Andrea Argentieri). Meanwhile, Claus returns to K.

In the third part, The Third Lie, screens and live actors intersect as Claus, now a writer under the pseudonym “Claus Lucas,” returns. Yet no one remembers him, and no evidence of his presence exists. The twins appear to reunite, but is it real? Or is one merely pretending to resemble the other (Gleijeses)? The performance leaves many questions unanswered, building a plausible yet uncertain reality.

Initially narrated in the third person, the play gradually introduces new perspectives that challenge previous assumptions. Argentieri, Battiston, Berti, and Gleijeses, supported by a cast of twenty appearing on video, deliver a kaleidoscopic, emotionally charged performance. Mirto Baliani and Emanuele Wiltsch Barberio’s rich soundscapes enhance this complex experience.

Through its inherent “lies,” theater reveals multiple, plausible truths. This bold, intricately crafted production preserves the complexity of Kristóf’s novel, offering it fresh vitality on stage.

Ágota’s Sidelong Gaze for Her Trilogy
By Maddalena Giovannelli | Il Sole 24 Ore, December 10, 2023

Those who read and loved The Trilogy of the City of K by Ágota Kristóf when it was first released in Italy (1998) often feel they remember the book and its dark atmospheres very well. However, when watching the newly debuted stage production of the same name at the Piccolo Teatro, the reader will discover that their memories probably relate to the first part of the trilogy, The Notebook: a chilling dark fable where the brothers Claus and Lucas face the harshness of war in an Eastern European town, enduring and provoking every kind of cruelty. The Fanny & Alexander company, responsible for the theatrical adaptation, takes on the challenge of unfolding the entire story (spanning over three hours), unraveling the inner threads, and attempting to discern the dense and dark weave of reality and fiction.

To do this, the company uses all the tools available in theater: an excellent dramatic adaptation (by Chiara Lagani), lighting, the articulation of space, and the relationship between character and performer (direction by Luigi De Angelis). Just one example will give an idea of the approach. In the second part, The Proof, Kristóf suggests that the pair of Claus and Lucas might actually be a product of one of their imaginations. Choosing whether to cast one actor for both brothers or two separate actors becomes a key directorial and interpretative decision (we won’t reveal the intricate solutions adopted here). For each act, the performance employs a different stylistic approach, immersing the audience in unsettling sound and visual landscapes. The childhood city of K—with its cemeteries, granaries, and border—is returned to our imagination through a forest of screens of varying sizes (a rare and elegant use of video on stage). The second act features a network of houses and rooms drawn in a Dogville-like manner through a strict light geometry (notable here is the acting performance of Alessandro Berti). The third act moves between three registers—dream, reality, past—while reconstructing the truth in a noir-like style.

At the beginning and end of the narrative, a curved and thoughtful figure, peering through thick glasses and taking notes, pulls the story together: actress Federica Fracassi (who also co-conceived the project) embodies Ágota Kristóf herself. A careful look at the program reveals an interesting chronological framework constructed by the company, highlighting the relationships between the broader historical context (the role of German and then Russian occupiers in Hungary), the small history of Lucas and Claus, and Ágota’s own biography. The symmetries are so numerous that they invite us to think that something of the horrific story we have just heard also concerns Kristóf. This is subtly suggested by her sidelong, sad, and sly gaze.

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The Trilogy of the City of K. Fanny & Alexander in Kristóf’s Web
By Sergio Lo Gatto | Teatro e Critica, December 14, 2023

The Trilogy of the City of K. is not a trilogy; it is a single story, fractured and bruised by a pained and obsessive handwriting. Returning to the same model, throughout her entire life as a writer, Hungarian-Swiss Ágota Kristóf will follow herself and her traumas (which are also those of all of Europe) in a maze of references, allusions, concealments, and abysses. The trilogy is not an epic, but an elegy, a waking nightmare in which the deepest human guilt is piled up. The Trilogy is an irresolvable logical anagram, a narrative charade that never gives the hope of adopting a point of view other than the author’s, who is engaged in slipping away through unsuspected tunnels dug into a labyrinthine, ultimately indecipherable structure of discourse.

We can say this because we attended the eponymous project by Federica Fracassi and Fanny & Alexander, produced by the Piccolo Teatro of Milan. It is a monumental endeavor that, in the hands of Chiara Lagani, no longer inhabits the realm of adaptation, but breaches the territory of possession, dramaturgical mesmerism, and the macabre creation and destruction of doubles. The story of the twins Lucas and Klaus—separated by the Russian invasion of Hungary in 1939 and then reunited and overlaid in a sort of elsewhere of memory that mixes with a delirious dreamscape—is a tale that sketches the outline of violence, war, the brutality of childhood, and the emotional tearing of adulthood.

The choice of the dark agora of the Teatro Studio Mariangela Melato is perfectly fitting, where Luigi De Angelis’s direction (read the interview by Simone Nebbia) can truly bring together thirty years of stage research from this surprising duo and ensnare the audience in a collective spell that is impossible to escape. In a vast stage depth, split in half by a thin strip of LED lights, squares of shaped light illuminate and gradually change, affecting the temperature of both the scene and the room. The space is open and doesn’t tolerate walls, hosting a few pieces of furniture pulled from their usual backdrop, left to act as a cold synecdoche for small lives in interior scenes. From above, about twenty screens are lowered, showing either a virtual set or icons framed in “digital rooms,” symbols of a story that cannot follow chronological ties. In this ineffable mirror game lies the meaning of a narrative that only appears fragmented, and rather holds in balance the different facets of a single—desperate—view of reality, made up of broken promises, betrayals, unjustifiable abuses, sudden deaths, and unexpected resurrections of one character inside another.

The sound design by Mirto Baliani and Emanuele Wiltsch Barberio is spatialized 360 degrees, spreading everywhere the surgical heterodirection—which has long been an art and rule in the hands of De Angelis and Lagani—that commands a chameleon-like cast (also thanks to the costumes by Gianluca Sbicca) of five performers who bring to life twenty-five characters: Andrea Argentieri is severely kind, Consuelo Battiston is agile in melodrama as well as invective, Lorenzo Gleijeses is granite and sharp, all in perfect rhythmic alignment and masters of the space, while actor-author Alessandro Berti is finally liberated as a performer, showcasing his mastery of body, gesture, and vocal nuances. Then there is Federica Fracassi, a sort of unstoppable and changeable ancestral spirit who inhabits almost all the sorrowful maternal figures summoned by the author, as well as the author herself, the latter in a near necromantic evocation that cites the path of mimetic portraits previously sketched by Fanny & Alexander.

Mounted on a lift that slowly rises from below a trapdoor is the giant sculpture of Mathias, the child-martyr who serves, for the story and for the director’s interpretation, as the scapegoat of a tale that leaves everyone defeated. With this oversized simulacrum of adolescence devoured by war—truly encapsulating Kristóf’s sense of innocence—the artist Nicola Fagnani reinterprets a hyperrealistic work by Ron Mueck: it comes to life in a chilling immobility, spreading in the space the child’s voice lent by poet Chandra Livia Candiani. The taste for the macabre and for the artificial, combined with a subtle work on the double, reappears in the final act when the two twins reunite in an unsettling doppelgänger, the metaphysical power of which is translated into the alienating donning of a mask: Berti’s facial features are animated by Gleijeses’s body and lips, Lucas/Klaus’s voice is now a recorded trace of medium frequencies, like those of long-distance calls. It resembles a mechanical piano relegated to the back of the stage, on which a ghost intervenes from time to time to tick.

Beyond the splendor of a sumptuous production—which, too often regrettably, will hardly travel across the country—what surprises about this endeavor is the appearance of total control over the intricate plot, treated like a cruel page of an inner diary that, had it not been crumpled by a paradoxical handwriting, could bear any of our signatures.

While it does not spare large slippages and reckless sine waves in the rhythm and duration of the stage performance, The Trilogy of the City of K. by Federica Fracassi and Fanny & Alexander does so in a calculated and intentionally rough manner: it is not an intellectual exercise but a challenge to the physical possibilities of theater. It demands much from the eye that watches and the ear that listens, sometimes irritating for its stubborn manipulation of our innate attempt to assign a singular meaning to life stories. The point, perhaps, lies precisely here: no matter how unpleasant it may seem, theater can turn space, body, and duration into an emotional and, at once, intimately political journey. And the feeling of discomfort is the same one Kristóf must have felt as, weaving the threads of such a tapestry, she realized that a singular identity is something we humans are not made for. Like a lesson in responsibility, this work seems to tell us that it is up to us to define and understand History, now exploded into a palindrome of events where, suddenly, meaning collapses and disappears.

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Journey with Ágotha Kristóf at the End of Childhood. Conversation with Luigi De Angelis, director of The Trilogy of the City of K by Nicola Arrigoni | Sipario, December 16, 2023

“You can’t explain everything, it’s not good. There’s not much to say about exile, death, and pain. They are facts. That’s all.” These are the words of Ágotha Kristóf, seeking a factual nature in what happens, inevitably dissolving in the multiplicity of perspectives. The narrative gaze of the twins Lucas and Klaus is set against the backdrop of an impending war, the abandonment of their childhood home. The Notebook, The Proof, and The Third Lie form the parts of the Trilogy of the City of K., a novel set during World War I, but without specifying historical coordinates, projecting the story into a kind of absolute narrative, mediated through the testimony of the two protagonists, Lucas and Klaus. The Trilogy of the City of K., staged by Fanny & Alexander, represents a shared calling from Federica Fracassi, embraced by the Piccolo Teatro di Milano and its director Claudio Longhi in a powerful and inventive production effort, testing the endurance of languages and exploring their potential.

“For this reason, a space like the Teatro Studio Melato seemed the right place to realize our Trilogy of the City of K., a project shared first with Federica Fracassi, who wanted to involve us in her dream, which became mine and Chiara Lagani’s, and that of the actors on stage: Andrea Argentieri, Consuelo Battiston, Alessandro Berti, Lorenzo Gleijeses. Alongside them is the participation, in video, of Fausto Cabra, Anna Coppola, Alfonso De Vreese, Giovanni Franzoni, Marta Malvestiti, Mauro Milone, Renato Sarti; and in voice, Chandra Candiani, Renzo Martinelli, Woody Neri. It feels right to start here, from this shared desire to be guided by language, by Kristóf’s words, and by a story that transcends time and space,” explains director Luigi De Angelis during a break between performances. De Angelis reflects on the production, which runs until December 21 in a special place: “They set up the dressing room for me on the fourth floor, which was Giorgio Strehler’s. It is an honor and a great emotion. This is a space where I can study, work, and reflect on how the show goes, night after night. It’s a space that reverberates with theater and the magic of theater, like the Faust by Goethe, one of Strehler’s great productions.”

In his words, there is a sense of uniqueness in the realization of The Trilogy of the City of K., marking a turning point or passage for Fanny & Alexander, a company known for its literary and theatrical incursions. “And that’s the case. The show is a complex technological machine where the actors on stage coexist with video ghosts, with screens that outline the space. Everything is designed for this space, and everything was possible thanks to the unique ability of the Piccolo Teatro di Milano to be a place of creativity, a world where dreams become reality, thanks not only to the intuition and creative thought of actors and directors, but also to a highly skilled technical staff. I’ll give one example: Before we began working, I knew that the team working with me and Chiara Lagani had already read the trilogy, they were already inside the production before it even started. The outcome of this work is the result of a creative and technical staff, and a care I’ve only found in major European theaters, and often, in opera productions.”

Returning to the material, to the starting point of the staging, one cannot help but notice that The Trilogy of the City of K. is one of those works that for some may be a revelation of unheard truths or a reason for self-reflection. This happened to Federica Fracassi, who sees Kristóf’s book as a pleasant obsession. What led Fanny & Alexander to embrace Fracassi’s proposal?
“At the base of this somewhat crazy but very satisfying adventure, there is a personal aspect that is crucial to understanding why Federica Fracassi’s proposal immediately resonated with me and Chiara Lagani. Chiara and I started working together when we were sixteen, in Ravenna. I met Chiara through her mother, Loretta Masotti, who was my history and philosophy teacher in high school. At the end of the nineties, she gave me The Trilogy of the City of K., a book that was extremely important and shocking at the time, and it was she who introduced me to Chiara. There are threads that reconnect in Federica’s proposal, and the idea of doing something together was a great gift.”

Turning to the performance, it seems that The Trilogy of K is not just a show, but an immersive experience that absorbs the audience, never giving them certainty. At the same time, the maturity of your actions is powerful and clear, reminiscent of your work on Alice or the shows dedicated to The Wizard of Oz. In a sense, history and language intertwine in many of your works. Here, everything happens in an amplified and intense way.
“There is a narrative aspect, tied to the novel, and another linguistic aspect, related to the language in which Kristóf wrote the novel: French, not her mother tongue, but the language of exile, of separation from her hometown. And after all, that’s what the novel is about: the escape from their hometown by the twins Lucas and Klaus with their mother, their being entrusted to their step-grandmother in The Great Notebook, which trains them in pain and erases their childhood dreams, moving on to the second part, The Proof, where an apparent reconnection of the story takes place, a story written in the third person. The story closes – if you can say so – with The Third Lie, which reverses the scenarios and casts doubt on the truth of the first two parts (the first and second lies?). Throughout all this, the story takes form like never before, from the language, from its rhythm, in a war-torn setting, with a violated and denied childhood at its center, or rather, a childhood trained to resist everything, pain, but also emotions and dreams. The Trilogy of the City of K. is a harsh book, offering little hope…”

You and Chiara Lagani enjoy engaging with narrative texts, such as Sylvie and Bruno by Lewis Carroll, The Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Frank Baum, and Ferrante’s Neapolitan Novels, not to mention If This Is a Man by Primo Levi. It’s clear that this territory is not unfamiliar to your direction and Lagani’s writing.
“In the first act, it’s Federica Fracassi, as Ágotha Kristóf, who gives voice and form to the story with a language almost telegraphic, with a foreign accent. We start from the awareness that words carry weight, and as the twins/Kristóf themselves say, verbs that describe feelings should not be used lightly. Federica Fracassi is both the writer and one of the twins, found at her desk, the place of the story’s epiphanies, where it takes form and voice before the audience. The storytelling is epiphanic thanks to the dynamic appearance of 21 screens that transform the space and evoke characters that are drawn in front of her during the act of writing. It’s as if we enter her mind. The second part features Lucas returning home, where everyone calls him ‘the fool’ of the village, and his return leads him to confront Mathias, the result of his father’s relationship with Jasmine. Mathias is a child trapped in his body, and we see him in a huge statue, modeled after those by sculptor Ron Mueck. A giant child, over two meters tall, looming over everyone. The third act, The Third Lie, shifts the perspective and reveals how, in the end, Kristóf’s writing is a way to reconnect with the places and times of childhood. This has been captured in Chiara Lagani’s rewrite, which is a profound respect for the novel and its unique and questioning linguistic thought.”

In all of this, words and the narrative possess a visionary and linguistic power that affirms Fanny & Alexander as a company that doesn’t just put on performances but gives images, space, and time to thought.
“I started from the subjective perspective of the reader who, when facing a book like this, finds a series of doors: they can open one, only to re-enter through another, crossing the novel in every direction. When Federica spoke to us about the project, I immediately imagined it like Lina Bo Bardi’s setup for the MASP (Museum of Art of São Paulo). The architect arranged the collection’s works not in the usual museum manner. In her project, paintings from different periods coexist in the same space, suspended as if flying in the void. The titles aren’t visible; it’s the visitor who, depending on their emotional impulse, is drawn to one painting or another.”

Is there a sort of temporal and spatial coexistence that doesn’t belong to our culture?
“Linear time,” Bo Bardi said, “is an invention of the West. Time is not linear; it’s a wonderful tangle where, at any moment, we can choose points and create solutions, with no beginning or end.” This vision reminded me of the feeling I had reading Kristóf’s three books, and we wanted to translate it into the show we built, a wonderful tangle in the acting method used, where the actors seem governed by threads, and the videos suspended in the void, large icons entrusted to the hands of the technicians, who are also part of the enormous ball we try to govern together.”

The Light in The Trilogy of the City of K. at the Teatro Studio Melato in Milan: Interview with Luigi De Angelis, by Cristina Tirinzoni | Luce Web, December 16, 2023

A dark fairy tale. Very dark. In a place and time with blurred borders, besieged by war. A narrative labyrinth revolving around the story of two twin brothers, Lucas and Klaus, from their cruel childhood with their witch-like grandmother to the adulthood of separation, and then a mysterious reunion. A narrative that skillfully blends the present and the past, truth and lies, overlaying the imagined, the dreamed, and the lived, presences and ghosts, stories within stories, disorienting the audience. Are Klaus and Lucas truly twins, or are they two faces of the same person? Perhaps everything we saw on stage was just what Lucas imagined (and wrote) in a novel after changing his name and fleeing abroad? A tangle of questions. Leaving the door open for interpretation, “You can’t explain everything, it’s not good. There’s not much to say about exile, death, and pain. They are facts. That’s all,” says Federica Fracassi, the actress portraying the writer, when she returns on stage to close the story, bidding farewell to her characters.

The theatrical version of The Trilogy of the City of K., based on the famous novel by Hungarian writer Ágota Kristóf, premiered at the Teatro Studio Mariangela Melato at the Piccolo Teatro in Milan (where it will run until December 21). The project was initiated by actress Federica Fracassi and the company Fanny & Alexander (with Chiara Lagani as the adapter and Luigi De Angelis handling the direction, set design, lighting, and video). On stage, alongside Federica Fracassi, are four other actors, each playing multiple roles: Andrea Argentieri, Consuelo Battiston, Alessandro Berti, and Lorenzo Gleijeses. They are all excellent (a round of applause for the entire cast).

A distinctive feature of the show is undoubtedly the lighting: the ability to create, with forms of light, in the simplicity of the staging, in a space almost entirely empty but filled with so many stories, the architectural and emotional space for each scene. The lighting setup is impressive: 34 light changes, 14 Svoboda projectors, shape projectors, and 27 video screens. At the computerized lighting console (synchronized with the audio track) is Manuel Frenda, chief electrician of the Piccolo Teatro, with sound design by Mirto Baliani and Emanuele Wiltsch Barberio. We delved deeper into this aspect with Luigi De Angelis, who oversees the direction and lighting. Born in Brussels in 1974, De Angelis has always placed light and its use as a central tool in his work, within a context of a complex and eclectic artistic activity in terms of languages. He is a director, set designer, filmmaker, light and sound designer. In 1992, he founded Fanny & Alexander in Ravenna with Chiara Lagani, one of the most radical experimental theater groups in Italy.

Why did you choose The Trilogy of the City of K.?

It comes from a sort of obsession that Chiara, Federica, and I have had for some time. There are so many aspects that make this novel incredibly beautiful and fascinating, starting with the writer’s not-easy prose. The dramatic material is initially volcanic, where reality and fiction continuously transform into one another, reflecting in a liquid and elusive way. And it can still speak to the present time in a provocative manner. What is true and what is false? We no longer know which lie or reality to believe.

How did the project come about?

From the very beginning, when Federica first proposed the idea to us, I was reminded of the setup thought by Brazilian architect Lina Bo Bardi for the São Paulo Museum of Art, where the artworks are not arranged chronologically or monographically, but rather in a single room, embedded in glass mounted on a marble base, appearing to float, suspended in the air. I wanted to do something similar for The Trilogy: create a multiplicity of viewpoints. I thought this space, the Teatro Studio Melato, was perfect for the labyrinthine structure of the text. Although I hope to take The Trilogy to other theaters, this one is ideal for the circular layout, which breaks the traditional actor-audience dynamic and allows for a constant dialectic of distance and proximity with the audience. A vortex of perspectives and trajectories that enables the audience to feel like they are part of the interpretative process, not just passive spectators.

How important is the use of lighting?

The theater that interests me most, that captures my attention, is theater that has the capacity to explore new languages. Light is an extremely important element, so it travels on the same track as the direction. I can never understand the boundary between set design and lighting design; for me, that barrier does not exist. Light cannot be reduced to merely a tool for beautifying the set or properly illuminating the actors. In fact, I don’t even think it’s that important for the actors to be lit according to the standards of manuals. Sometimes I want the actor to move toward the light that creates the space. The light is not at the service of illustrating the show, but of expression, so that the dramaturgy of the text speaks, in some way, subliminally to the audience. The immaterial nature of light can express what is unspoken, which the audience can then perceive, transform, and send forward.

How did you conceive the lighting for this production?

At the start of the show, Ágota Kristóf (played by Federica Fracassi, with an impressive physical mimesis) is seated at a desk, writing her novel, as if she were in her own study at home. I wanted a light that would protect her intimacy, wrapping her softly, like the shell of an almond. I used a series of shape projectors with very narrow optics (5 or 10 degrees) that resemble bazookas. Even when placed ten meters away, they allow focusing the light on a very small point, even details like her feet. In the scene of Clara’s violent encounter with Klaus, Clara’s face is completely illuminated in icy white, almost like a spectral creature, while everything around her is bathed in a reddish-purple hue. In the second part, the lighting serves a more “architectural” function. The city of K is depicted emotionally or geometrically by rectangles drawn using perpendicular shape projectors, complemented by two LED lamps lowered from above. Their distance from the floor can vary depending on the situation, concentrating or widening the colored beam. Their function, like the overhead color changers, is to make the scenes vibrate with color that has an emotional, rather than illustrative, role. The immaterial element of light shapes the space, creating the architectural skeleton of the city, in a psychological suspension determined by color. The third part culminates in the verbal duel between the two brothers inside their castle of narratives. The linearity of time is broken, with scenes synchronizing and speeding up.

From above, the famous Svoboda projectors dominate, casting powerful beams of light.