Madly

Lara, a 35-year-old furniture restorer who has recently ended yet another one in the series of difficult relationships, and Piero, a divorced 50-year-old teacher with a young daughter, have set up their first date. This date seemingly progresses as such first encounters between two people, who hope for a new partner relationship, do. But in reality, the situation is a little different, because each one of them comes to the date with an army of inner “personalities” who represent their different mental and emotional sides. The evening thus shifts between attempts of Laura and Piero to get close and the arguments between the embodiments of inner voices through typical male and female figures that advise, warn, encourage and detract … Missteps, slips and stumbles, but also tensions caused by reawakened memories and wounds, finally bring them to true closeness and an opportunity for a shared future.

Paolo Genovese is a renowned screenwriter and director, perhaps best known for this film Perfect Strangers (2016), whose work successfully transferred to the stage. The stage adaptation of the film Madly, which won the Nastro d’Argento for best comedy, blends romantic warmth with a witty presentation of psychological processes. The director of the play is Jasmin Kovic, already known at the SNT Nova Gorica for her direction of Jason Robert Brown’s romantic musical The Last Five Years at the SNT Nova Gorica, while her stage rendition of Genovese’s Perfect Strangers was a comedy hit at the Šentjakobsko gledališče in Ljubljana.  

How many personalities do we have? How many aspects of our character do we have to face when we take a decision? And how many internal battles take place in our heads when this decision-making becomes unpleasant, complicated, vexing or risky? This is the starting point of our comedy, which seeks to explore and present internal conflicts that we face when making important decision – particularly those that can make our lives either wonderful or unbearable: the romantic ones.

_{Paolo Genovese}