The Prose Season of the Fondazione Teatro Donizetti is about to start. From Saturday, December 7 to Sunday, December 15, The Sunshine Boys, the first of seven titles on the bill, will be staged, with eight performances each, until May 2025. The famous comedy by American Neil Simon will feature on stage, directed by Massimo Popolizio, two great masters of Italian theater, Umberto Orsini and Franco Branciaroli, alongside Flavio Francucci, Chiara Stoppa, Eros Pascale, and Emanuela Saccardi. Translation by Masolino D’Amico. Sets by Maurizio Balò. Costumes by Gianluca Sbicca. Lighting by Carlo Pediani. Sound by Alessandro Saviozzi. Produced by Teatro de Gli Incamminati, Compagnia Orsini, Teatro Biondo Palermo, in collaboration with CTB Centro Teatrale Bresciano and AMAT Associazione Marchigiana Attività Teatrali and Comune di Fabriano. Duration 2 hours including intermission. Showtimes: evening at 8:30 PM, except Monday 9; Sunday, December 8 and 15 at 3:30 PM. Inspired by the life of a famous vaudeville duo, Joe Smith and Charles Dale, The Sunshine Boys (original title The Sunshine Boys) debuted on Broadway in 1972 directed by Alan Arkin. Numerous and highly successful theatrical productions followed worldwide in the subsequent decades, and the 1975 film adaptation, with a screenplay by the same author, directed by Herbert Ross, starring Walter Matthau and George Burns, won multiple awards. In 1995, a television adaptation featured two major stars: Woody Allen and Peter Falk. The two main characters in Neil Simon’s comedy, rightly considered one of the greatest American writers of the last fifty years, are two elderly variety actors who worked together their entire lives, forming a duo known as “The Sunshine Boys.” After separating due to irreconcilable differences, they are called to reunite eleven years later for a television show that wants them together for one night to celebrate the history of American vaudeville. The two, with their different personalities, try to mend the rift that separated them for so many years in an attempt to revive a comedy act that made them famous. Old misunderstandings resurface more deeply rooted, and this difficult chemistry serves as a pretext for a game of brilliant comedy and profound melancholy. Certain exchanges and hilarious situations are not only sources of comedy but also offer a deeply tender look at the world of theater, which, when its creators are on the decline, shows all its human fragility. Umberto Orsini and Franco Branciaroli come together in The Sunshine Boys to bring this text, now a classic, back to life, attempting to capture everything that brings it closer to the theater of Beckett (Endgame) or even Chekhov (The Swan Song), rather than a work of pure entertainment.
In this tribute to the world of actors, with their little delightful quirks and tragic miseries, they are joined by the direction of Massimo Popolizio, who finds in the two protagonists those companions with whom he has shared many of the most intense and significant experiences in Italian theater.
