It will be a marathon for everyone, not just for those who have worked on it over the past two years adapting an 800-page monster novel for the stage. Not only for the seven actors who will have to perform on stage called to a crazy effort of physical and emotional concentration but also for the audience, nailed to their chairs several times, on different days.
The director Antonio Latella, not new to these exceptional feats, makes his world premiere on November 6th at the Arena del Sole in Bologna with “La valle dell'Eden” by John Steinbeck (1902-1968), a monumental twentieth-century American novel written by the Nobel Prize winner in 1952, which was also approached by directors such as Elia Kazan (with James Dean as the leading actor) to tell the story of two families through different generations.
The first act will be staged on 6 November (then also on 7, 8 and 10), while the second part is scheduled for 13, 14, 15 and 17. Two dates instead for those who want to see "Eden Valley" in its entirety according to Latella and Linda Dalisi who signed the adaptation together with the director: November 9 and 16, from 16 pm until late in the evening, with a refreshing break.
Latella explains, director of the Venice Biennale Theater for three years, winner of Ubu awards - the Oscars of the Italian theater - a much loved director who at the same time makes the more orthodox public discuss a lot for his readings of the classics (many were enraged by his Goldonian "The servant of two masters" of 2013 ): “We were confronted with a great material, with a single watchword: 'testament', in its double meaning. In the sense of the biblical Old Testament and in the sense of inheritance. Today we have to ask ourselves if we are able to deal with inheritance because a will is not always beneficial, but every time it produces a via crucis”.
The adaptation – reads the note by Ert-Emilia Romagna Theater Foundation which produces the show together with Metastasio of Prato and Stabile dell'Umbria – focuses on the life path of Adam Trask, son of a father who forces him to enlist and go to war, brother in dispute in the liberation from family ties, then husband eager for his Eden, finally himself father of two children. The story spans three generations (in the turn of the century between the 800s and 900s) and takes place mostly in the Salinas Valley, California, against the backdrop of the utopian race to the West.
Adam Trask goes beyond the crucial points of his meeting with Cathy/Kate, his friendship with the Chinese cook Lee and Samuel Hamilton, colliding and sinking the dilemma of the struggle between good and evil into infinity. The investigation into the biblical history of our most remote ancestors, Cain and Abel, up to Cain's exile in the "northern land, east of Eden", accompanies the whole work. And not surprisingly, the original title chosen by Steinbeck was “East of Eden”, taken from verse 16 of Book IV of the Genesis: a place beyond, in the Salinas River valley, in a dark and distant California.
For the occasion Ert organizes “All aboard”, a free shuttle service from Modena and Cesena towards Bologna to allow spectators to see “The Eden Valley”. After Bologna, the show will be on tour from 20 to 24 November 2019, Teatro Metastasio (Prato), from 27 to 1 December 2019, Teatro Morlacchi (Perugia), from 5 to 15 May 2020 at Argentina in Rome.
