M: Son of the Century

In M: Son of the Century, Antonio Scurati doesn’t simply write a historical novel about the rise of Benito Mussolini; he dissects a moment in which a society, worn out by war, humiliation, economic insecurity and a crisis of political representation, starts yearning for a leader. And it is in this crevasse between the collective fear and the desire for order that fascism is born – not as an abstract ideology from textbooks, but as a series of very concrete gestures, speeches, manipulation, media images and violent rituals. Scurati’s novel, conceived as a documentary epic, blends literary imagination and historic sources and shows how dictatorships don’t appear overnight but instead grow from everyday life, language, the weariness of democracy and the fascination with power.

The theatre adaptation of this monumental work is not a reconstruction of history; rather, it is a confrontation with the present. The production speaks not only of Mussolini but also of mechanisms that can push any society closer to authoritarianism: it speaks about the creation of an enemy, the eroticism of power, the allure of political spectacle and about how masses turn into co-authors of their own subjugation. In that sense, Scurati’s text feels almost eerily contemporary. It reminds us that fascism is not a relic of the past but a constant possibility of modernity.

What interests me on stage is this precise moment when politics turns into theatre. Mussolini was not merely a political figure but a performer – a body that produces myth, a voice that hypnotises, a face that becomes a screen for collective projections. Therefore, this production explores the line between a political speech and a stage act, between a historic document and a recurring nightmare. Scurati opens up space so that we can understand how violence first appears as rhetoric, then as an image, and only then as an act.

The son of the century thus becomes more than just a story about a single person. It is a production about a century that believed in redemption through catastrophe – and about our time which, perhaps in a way more dangerous than we wish to admit, once again recognises itself in this mirror.

 

_{Ivica Buljan}