July 12, 2018

“Under the influence of “Black Mirror”, “Audition” puts on stage a game of power on the background of the ultraliberal nihilism. If bodies always have market value, it isn’t anymore the beautiful body to be demanded, but the sick body (…). What starts up like an erotic casting is slowly replaced by a moral dilemma: can you accept to consciously infect anybody when the reward is 100.000 euros?

July 11, 2018

Two men and a woman face themselves in an extremely cruel game driven by perversion. The beginning of the show (which reminds Mr. Klein by Losey) is enigmatic but, like a good thriller, step by step all the elements are disclosed and they lead to a horrifying situation – especially considering that it’s inspired by a real story. The protagonists are gradually revealed in order to better make the audience drop into the tragic plot (…). For the relations it describes between the characters – which are all involved in surprising efforts of self-destruction – the piece tends to universality. The struggle between good and evil comes to the surface without ever falling into the trap of Manicheism. A powerful work that talks about humiliating games of power, that sometimes lead to redemption (…). You come out disturbed and full of questions about human nature. It’s worth a see!

May 24, 2018

“An eruption of violent emotions attracted the audience for the entire duration of a fascinating and intense show which was most of all without frills. Deprived of useless sequins, scenic superfluities and rhetoric, the performance brought on stage by this promising company is lively, essential and effective. It's a poor theatre only when it comes to the budget, but rich - and it's so rare today – when it comes to the content. "

April 15, 2018

"The direction is genuinely clever: it surrounds the viewer in an aura of trepidation: you can get free from that only with the end of the action, most of all because it knows how to create character swerves, emotional repercussions, hidden tensions that explore unknown spaces in a crescendo of revelations that starts from the initial framework of job interview and slowly turns to an obsessive desire for death to be given and received. The actors and the author are truly sincere: they don’t interpret themselves but they build with perfect psychological acumen the human types (...) So this is not the photography of perversion, but its painting, an artistic transfer that – according to the Aristotelian canon – educates without staining and indicates without being accomplice."

April 12, 2018

"Francesco Toto’s direction doesn’t give space to unnecessary trappings, leaving on stage just what is strictly essential. Both the lack of music and the well worked-out diffused light let “The Casting” emotionally involve the public with the mere power of a strong text and the talented actors, who are also able to make him fall into a whirlwind of doubts and breath-taking plot twists"

April 14, 2018

“The Casting, an award-winning show that has already been selected in many festivals, bases its dramaturgical quality on an intriguing text written by Chiara Arrigoni, which is also supported by the vibrant interpretation of Arrigoni herself and her antagonists, Massimo Leone and Andrea Ferrara (…). All of them are capable of keeping high the public’s attention on a rough subject, without ever going down in vulgarity. The elegance of the pièce, beyond words and severe gestures, reveals a refined theatrical warp that, with a sincere and touching desire for change, makes this show one of the best proposals of Palco Off." 

April 09, 2018

"Over a tense and often uncomfortable hour, details of their task and what led them to this point are slowly and carefully revealed as the pair become increasingly desperate and forced to obey the whims of their intimidating interviewer. Chiara Arrigoni, who also wrote the play, and Andrea Ferrara give committed and intense performances, while Massimo Leone plays their sleazy interrogator perfectly.”

“We suddenly turn up in a dystopian bubble, stuck between some cold imaginary walls where the audition takes place. The room is naked and also the characters will take off their cloths to wear some new ones, literally and metaphorically, in order to discover the unsolvable dichotomy of human beings: good and evil. The existence of evil rises clearly and becomes a certainty and leads the game. It awakes in the audience an atavistic sense of guilt, like we’re victims and accessories too. (…)

This story is brief and strong: it’s able to open some horizons of meaning about our contemporary times. It doesn’t comfort, but disturb, and it eventually allows you to catch a small light of hope in the absurdity of a world that has became “human, all too human”: beyond all logics, morals, religions and ideals.”

“The story is a crescendo of tension and cruelty: the arrogant recruiter Mr T. leads an actual interrogation against two candidates, Sarah and Miguel, in order to offer a job that’s going to yield a return of 100,000 euros for just one night. Little by little, the audience begins to understand the creepy task that just one of them will be hired to carry out: to spread a disease in a kind of sexual Russian roulette. It’s a Dionysian ritual that have lost all its holiness in exchange of a celebration of death and squalor”  

June 27, 2018

"After an immediately gloomy start, dominated by the presence and the lashing words of the recruiter, who tries to put the candidates against each other by focusing on their respective strengths (the first has a strong experience while the second is above suspicion), the two candidates are left alone to have a confrontation, to know each other, to discover each other's truths (...). The dialogues are often locked up with beatings and responses, with the same rhythm of the sticomitìa in ancient dramaturgy: the dialogues often touch the topic with generic arguments, but expressive and functional for the diegesis"

"Audition" wins the Giovani Realtà del Teatro National Prize - Professional Jury Award, with the following motivation: “For the original dramaturgical conception which suggests possible developments thanks to an intriguing plot and skillful in maintaining a good level of suspense that alludes to a dystopian cinematography"

“Both actors and characters are credible, the staging is clean, however can often be disturbing. The disease is the key to demolish others in your struggle for life. Pain, defeat, and change: it’s the explosive evolution of a female character that’s inflexible in her collapse."

“In a running time of thirty minutes the piece collects tension and plot twists, with precision, rhythm and dramatic awareness - without excluding the natural aspect of some humour circumstances. A thick text about cutthroat ambition and the destructive power of wealth - It is easy to link it to some recent news items.''

"It is a play about desperation. There’s no place for fear - It is not the strongest one to win but rather the meanest one. It could be the person who has lost all humanity when in reality it’s humanity itself that has betrayed them. Your enemy could be in others or in yourself, in the masks of silence, in other people’s experiences. Trying to have a normal life is just for the rich cause they have the chance to forget. They can take the disease and change it, set it aside or even divert it. They can also silence their grief, take care of it and sedate it with the power of pleasure.”