"What highlights the conflicts and contrasts are first and foremost Aurora Damanti's costumes, capable of underlining the antagonisms of class and aspiration that run through the work: if Firs (a poignant Tino Rossi) is an old man in a wheelchair, wearing a dark suit and a bow tie, the familiar humanity that gathers around Ranevskaja's exasperated — and exasperating — body and gestures is instead a caravanserai of colors and fabrics, of acetate tracksuits and leggings combined with sequins and fleece pyjamas, of bright ties on shoes that are too big or too old, of leather trousers worn under oversized jackets. We imagine them fishing, with a marked taste for excess, among the offers of a second-hand clothing shop, these characters who enter the scene from the back of the stalls, announced by a self-confident Lopachin — the ambiguous, extraordinary Mario Pirrello — in his anonymous, clerical grey uniform. of those who have been able to free themselves from their origins. Here they are, these protagonists of a contemporary bohème..." (...)

(Alessandro Iachino, www.stratagemmi.it, July 23, 2024)