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Chicago Tribune | Arts+Entertainment | Section 4 | Sunday, June 23, 2013
Publication Date: 06/23/2013
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Toni Servillo makes
his Chicago debut
with “Inner Voices.”
Neapolitan,
naturally
The best Italian actor (Toni Servillo)
you don’t know — yet
REGIS DUVIGNAU/REUTERS PHOTO
By Michael Phillips
Tribune critic
When the Italians say “cinema,” it
sounds better than when the Americans
say it. CHEE-nay-ma. Doesn’t that sound
better?
Born in 1959 and widely considered to
be his nation’s greatest stage and screen
actor, Toni Servillo is seven hours ahead of
us in Chicago, Skyping from his kitchen at
home in Caserta, in the Campania region of
southern Italy. Caserta is near Naples, the
location of Servillo’s creative home, Teatri
Uniti, which he co-founded in 1987. Early
in the interview he sneaks in a two-second
pantomime routine, the international “Can
I borrow a cigarette?” fingers-to-lips gesture, silently communicating with his
unseen wife. Such a simple bit, but it’s a
thrill to see it handled by a masterly actor. I
am seated in an office at the Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago next to my translator, Andrea Raos, the deputy cultural
attache. We are drinking espresso. Across
the world, so is Servillo.
He is little known to American theater
audiences. He is better known for a dazzling body of film work, including recent
turns as the crime boss in the terrific “Gomorrah” (2008), directed by Matteo Garrone; the sphinxlike, possibly murderous
prime minister Giulio Andreotti in director
Paolo Sorrentino’s “Il Divo” (also from
2008); and most recently, premiering last
month at the Cannes Film Festival, in “La
Grande Bellezza” (“The Great Beauty”),
also directed by Sorrentino, in which Servillo — an unclassifiable performer, with
the gravity and force of Gene Hackman but
with the rumpled allure of middle-aged
Marcello Mastroianni — brings mysterious
charm to the role of a jaded celebrity journalist, whose chronicles of Rome have led
to a crisis of the soul.
This week, Servillo and company make
their Chicago debut with five performances of a rarely staged 1948 Eduardo De
Filippo play “Inner Voices.” It’s a touring
production co-presented by three companies: Piccolo Teatro di Milano, Teatro di
Roma and Teatro Uniti.
Chicago Shakespeare Theater Executive
Director Criss Henderson caught the production in Rome. “When you bring in a
sizable company such as this,” he says of
the 30-person cast and crew, “it comes at a
cost. But when you’re talking about some
of the great performers of the world, it’s
well worth the investment.”
“Inner Voices” was born in the period
following the ravages of World War II,
when films such as Roberto Rossellini’s
“Rome, Open City” and Vittorio De Sica’s
“Bicycle Thieves” showed an international
audience a country and a people riven by
mistrust. The play, staged by Servillo, features the actor-director as a man who
dreams of a murder committed by a neighbor. It’s real enough to convince the man
he must notify the police. Before long a
tangled web, spanning both lies and truth,
has been spun, and “Inner Voices” has
been characterized in its previous touring
stops in Marseilles and Rome as black
comedy pointing ahead to such writers as
Samuel Beckett and Harold Pinter.
On YouTube you can see all sorts of
Servillo performances and interviews,
some in their entirety (though without
English subtitles), including Servillo’s own
staging of the internationally popular De
Filippo comedy “Saturday, Sunday, Monday.” Watching Servillo in that telecast,
fully inhabiting the beleaguered patriarch
of the piece, you see where he’s coming
from when, in the recent interview
through a translator, he speaks of “great
simplicity and dryness” as being paramount virtues. His favorite American actor,
he says, is Spencer Tracy. “He is above
everybody,” Servillo says, with a smile. “An
absolute natural.”
The same has been said of Servillo. “I’m
almost at a loss to describe him,” Henderson says. “He’s extraordinary. He has a
charisma that is singular and he isn’t
SERVILLO ON SCREEN
“Gomorrah” (2008): In this fact-based
crime thriller, Toni Servillo brings an easygoing touch to the role of Franco, the Camorra mob boss. “I wanted him to seem
like the nicest character in the picture,” he
told the Tribune. “Or at least the most
honest.”
“Il Divo” (2008): Premiering the same
year at Cannes as “Gomorrah,” this operatically scaled and sleekly amusing portrait
of corruption features Servillo as the most
notorious of all the recent Italian prime
ministers, Giulio Andreotti. From the Tribune review: Servillo “risks caricature in
nearly every particular: His mincing step,
apparently boneless hands and half-smile
make you wonder if this performance will
collapse, or grow dull. It does not.”
Servillo will be present for a screening of
Toni Servillo stars in “La Grande BellezPaolo Sorrentino’s “Il Divo” at 5:30 p.m.
za” (“The Great Beauty”).
Sunday at the AMC River East 21, 322 E.
Illinois St. The Servillo tribute is sponsored
by the Chicago International Film Festival, the Italian Ministry of Cultural Affairs and the
Italian Cultural Institute of Chicago. Tickets at chicagofilmfestival.com.
“La Grande Bellezza” (“The Great Beauty,” 2013): In the “Il Divo” director’s latest,
Servillo swans around in a glorious funk of melancholy as Jep, the hotshot Roman journalist whose soul needs saving. The New York Times had one word for Servillo’s performance: “fantastic.” The film is due in America later this year.
— M.P.
stamping his performance with any movie
star quality. He’s simple.”
Gene Siskel Film Center programming
director Barbara Scharres saw Servillo’s
latest screen triumph in Cannes, in “The
Great Beauty.” (The film is due in the U.S.
later this year and is already a big hit in
Italy.) “He’s riveting,” she says, “in a very
quiet performance.”
Silvio Marchetti, head of the Italian
Cultural Institute of Chicago, is a partner in
sponsoring the Chicago engagement of
“Inner Voices.” Servillo, he says flatly, “is
Neapolitan. That has everything to do with
his way of acting. Neapolitans are extremely empathetic, whereas the typical
northern attitude is more about not showing or sharing your feelings.” On the other
hand, Marchetti says, Servillo’s subtlety
suggests Neapolitan earthiness mixed with
“the understatement of the north.”
Servillo winces when told of the typical
American approach to De Filippo, all bug
eyes and mugging. “Dignity first, always,”
he says: That’s the key to this writer. The
key to Servillo’s own career, which has yet
to (and may never) include an Englishlanguage film, is simple: theater and film,
film and theater. Plus directing operas on
the side.
“A solid theatrical education can only
improve a screen performance,” he says. “It
gives you a fuller capacity to read a script
and understand a character, for one thing.
It’s important to alternate between the two
activities.”
After the Chicago performances, Servillo, his wife and their two sons (ages 16 and
10) are heading west for a vacation to San
Francisco and thereabouts. It’ll be his first
trip to California.
By the time he was 20, Servillo knew
what he wanted. “To act,” he says. “That’s
all. I never dreamed I would be onstage in
Berlin, Paris, New York, and now Chicago.
Acting requires a lot of discipline to go with
the obsession. It’s a path of knowledge, and
of self-knowledge. Sometimes you get lost
on the path. And then you find yourself
again.”
“Inner Voices,” 7:30 p.m. Tues.-Sat., Chicago
Shakespeare Theater, Navy Pier, 800 E.
Grand Ave.; $50-$70; chicagoshakes.com
or 312-595-5600.
mphillips@tribune.com
LITERARY
DIRECTORY
A synopsis of literary events & happenings
MONDAY, June 24
WEDNESDAY, June 26
Author Sahar Delijani with her debut novel,
Children of the Jacaranda Tree
Bestselling author Carl Hiaasen with his new book,
Bad Monkey
6:30 p.m. at The Book Stall
811 Elm
Winnetka
(847) 446-8880
6:30 p.m. at The Book Stall
811 Elm St.
Winnekta
(847) 446-8880
TUESDAY, June 25
Al Yankovic with his new children’s book,
My New Teacher and Me
Greg Borzo for a discussion about his new book,
Chicago Cable Cars
6 p.m. at Chicago Public Library, West Town Branch
1625 W. Chicago Ave.
For more information visit chicagopubliclibrary.org,
or call (312) 743-0260
Wimpy Kid Book 8 Mobile with Wimpy Kid videos,
giveaways and fun!
11 a.m. at Anderson’s Bookshop
5112 Main St.
Downers Grove
(630) 986-5576
and
3 p.m. at Anderson’s Bookshop
123 W. Jefferson Ave.
Naperville
(630) 355-2665
THURSDAY, June 27
Mardi Jo Link with her memoir, Bootstrapper: From
Broke to Badass on a Northern Michigan Farm
6:30 p.m. at Book Stall
811 Elm
Winnetka
(847) 446-8880
New Yorker cartoonist Pat Brynes with his new
book, Captain Dad: The Manly Art of
Stay-at-Home Parenting
7 p.m. at The Book Cellar
4736-38 N Lincoln Ave.
(773) 293-2665
Will Schwalbe discusses his book,
The End of Your Life Book Club
7 p.m. at Highland Park Public Library
494 Laurel Avenue
Highland Park
(847) 432-0216
BOOKS
WANTED
7 p.m. at Anderson’s Bookshop
123 W. Jefferson Ave.
Naperville
(630) 355-2665
Class #: 10225
FRIDAY, June 28
Wil Tustin signs and discusses his new historical
fiction novel, Ambushed
12 p.m. at Barnes and Noble Bookstore (Depaul Center)
1 E Jackson Blvd
Chicago
(312) 362-8792
Bestselling children’s author Ute Krause reads
from her picture books, Oscar and the Very Hungry
Dragon and Nick and the Nasty Knight
6:30 p.m. at The Book Stall
811 Elm
Winnetka
(847) 446-8880
Khaled Hosseini with his new novel,
And the Mountains Echoed
7 p.m. at Book Stall
811 Elm
Winnekta
(847) 446-8880
Anderson’s Bookshop in Naperville hosts a score of
authors for an exciting weekend!
June 28 – June 30
7 p.m.
For a complete list of authors go to www.andersonsbookshop.com
or call (630) 355-2665
UPCOMING EVENTS
Anthony Stanford for a discussion on his book,
Homophobia and the Black Church: How
Faith, Politics and Fear Divide the Black Community
Thriller writers Jeffery Deaver and Jeff Abbott with
their new book, The Kill Room
(Deaver) and Downfall (Abbott)
Monday, July 1
7 p.m. at Anderson’s Bookshop
123 W. Jefferson Ave.
Naperville
(630) 355-2665
Author Alice Walker with two new books, The
Cushion in the Road and The World Will Follow Joy
Monday, July 1
7:30 p.m. at First Free Church
5255 N. Ashland
Chicago
To purchase a book and guarantee a seat, please visit Women & Children
First at 5233 N. Clark or call (773) 769-9299
SPECIAL EVENTS
June 2013, 12-6
Bookman’s Alley’s Now or Never Sale! 1000’s
of fine books will be yours at 70% discount.
Additionally the bulk of the graphic material will be
bargain priced.
Saturday, June 29
1 p.m. at Woodson Regional Library
9525 S. Halsted St.
For more information visit chicagopubliclibrary.org,
or call (312) 747-6921
Bookman’s Alley is located in the rear of 1712 Sherman Ave. in
Evanston.
(847) 869-6999
Author Tom Angleberger with new activity book,
Art2-D2’s Guide to Folding and Doodling
Jerilyn Miripol,
Self Discovery Through Creative Writing.
jmiripol@gmail.com
Sunday, June 30
3 p.m. at Anderson’s Bookshop
5112 Main St.
Downers Grove
(630) 963-2665
WORKSHOPS
Creative Writing Workshop
St. Francis Hospital
(847) 251-6721
JEFF HIRSCH BOOKS
House Calls Made for Large Collections: Seeking Photography, Art, Architecture, Design, Fashion, Poetry 1st Editions, Drama,
Signed Books, Easton Press, Franklin Library, Folio Society - Jeff Hirsch Books - (847) 570-9115
For a full listing of weekly Literary Events and Offerings, please turn to the Books section every Saturday in the Chicago Tribune.
For advertising rates and deadlines, please call Amir Burke (312) 527-8061