Maggie Rose whips up a storm of talent with a Milan-centric Tempest

English Theatre Milan are staging a new version of Shakespeare’s The Tempest on 4th and 5th May. The themes of the play span conflict and reconciliation, the clash of cultures and colonialism, as well as revenge, magic and… Milan! As ETM point out in their publicity for the show “Our production is unique in another way; its very title, The Tempest in Milan, indicates links between this tragicomedy and Milan. The lead characters Prospero, the former Duke of Milan, his daughter Miranda, and brother Antonio, come from Milan, and the name of our city is mentioned over twenty times. We hope this interpretation will contribute to making Milan a ‘Shakespearian’ city as it well deserves”.

The fruit of ETM’s annual workshop, this staging of The Tempest in English marks something of a first in Milan. The cast is composed of both professionals and non-professionals, mostly native English speakers, hailing from the USA, UK, Ireland, Iran and Italy.

Led by Maggie Rose, who teaches British Theatre Studies at Milan State University (L’Università Statale di Milano), this production marks a departure from ETM’s previous projects: a veritable “research lab” drawing together contributions from a variety of disciplines. Artist Betta Marzorati has designed a backcloth for the Banquet scene; a group of students from the Brera School of Set Design (Scuola di Scenografia) have designed the Banquet and lent their expertise to both the props and costumes. An intern from the Catholica University of Milan (Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore) forms part of the impressive team assembled by Maggie and ETM.

The play is directed by Maggie Rose with Melissa Marino doubling as both Assistant Director and the character of Stephano. The cast include: Tommaso Bavestrelli (Caliban), Amy Barton (Prospero), Manfredi Costa (Gonzalo), Julia DiBona (Sebastian), Giulia Gibbon (Ariel), Verlie Anne Jones (Trinculo), Hugo McCafferty (Alonso), Melissa Marino (Stephano), Shila Pakbaz (Antonio), Daria Popa (Miranda) and Eugenio Scotti Camuzzi (Ferdinand).

The music is led by Amy Barton, artistic director of the Youth Choir of Milan and soprano with the Milan Singers.

Banquet Design: Beatrice Di Vincenzo, Margherita Magnoni, Matilde Paganini, Martina Toia (Scuola di Scenografia, Accademia di Brera)

The show is produced by Sal Cabras of ETM and Julia DiBona is Assistant Stage Manager

The performance will take place on two nights: Saturday 4th May at 8pm at All Saints Church, via Solferino 17 (which recently hosted Justin Butcher in the J Productions presentation of The Devil’s Passion) and Sunday 5th May at 4pm at CAM, corso Garibaldi 27, the former convent of Santa Maria degli Angeli, which features a beautiful portico by Bramante.

Find out more: visit English Theatre Milan for full details.

Fritters, Blinis and Bristin: an Evening of Comedy - Review

J Productions, the brainchild of theatre impresario Julia Holden, returned to Milan’s Teatro Filodrammatici on Wednesday 24th January, serving up a highly unusual and memorably tasty comic concoction. Directed by Justin Butcher and featuring an excellent ensemble cast (Stephen Guy Daltry, Rupert Mason, Jennie Eggleton and Butcher himself) Fritters, Blinis and Bristin: an Evening of Comedy offered food for thought and laughs galore.

You’ve definitely heard of fritters. You've probably heard of blinis (even if you've never eaten one). But Bristin?? Unless you’re a hard-core fan of Dario Fo (winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature), I doubt that word will ring a bell. Fear not, however - all will be revealed soon.

So, hopefully you've worked up a healthy appetitie: let’s tuck in. 

The programme was in two parts beginning with the fritters and blinis (the latter being East European pancakes buttered and served with smoked salmon or caviar. Anton Chekhov couldn’t get enough of them when he visited Siberia – and even wrote a story about a blini to die for). Before the interval, we were treated to three Chekhov one-act plays, vaudeville farces in fact. Farce may not be something you associate with the angsty samovar-centred drawing-room-and-veranda-based tragedies of Russia’s best-known dramatist. But apparently he churned them out when he was getting started (although his English Wikipedia page barely mentions them). 

Russian blinis with red caviar, sour cream and dill. Image: Cooking the World

Accompanied by Stephen Guy Daltry on the accordion, the show kicked off with a selection of Russian songs, which were also interspersed throughout the fritter- and blini-based segment as palate cleansers of sorts. (The company’s Kalinka got the audience clapping in time to the music: a slightly odd sensation, given the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. It should be noted, however, that the J Productions presentation of Under Milk Wood starring Guy Masterson-Mastroianni, staged in the same theatre in 2022, was in aid of Ukrainian refugees. Justin Butcher himself is an outspoken champion of human rights.)

Audience at the Teatro Filodrammatici

The first course in this Russian section took the form of a monologue entitled The Evils of Tobacco. A twitchy, snuff-taking gentleman, the henpecked husband of a penny-pinching harridan who rules her academy for young ladies (and hubby) with a rod of iron, is supposed to be delivering a scientific lecture warning his audience of the dangers of the “noxious weed” but he is constantly sidetracked from his main aim, griping and sniping at the woman who has made his life a misery. Rupert Mason’s delivery was flawless: the taut, nervous husband gradually takes the audience deeper into his confidence, finally uttering howls of long-suppressed despair before finally realising he has gone too far and withdrawing back into the straitjacket of his quiet desperation. In fact, as with all three fritters and blinis on offer here, the laughter has a bitter aftertaste of the kind we associate with the best 1970s British sitcoms: Steptoe & Son, Rising Damp, etc. People trapped in situations that would be tragic if they weren’t funny. (Mr Blini, anyone?)

Rupert Mason as the ageing vaudevillian and Stephen Guy Daltry as the prompter in Swansong

Next up was Swansong. An ageing actor (Mason again) finds himself alone in the theatre after the audience has left and the lights have gone out. He is startled by what he takes for an apparition: a ghostly figure combining Scrooge in a long white nightshirt and cap holding a candle with at least one of the Christmas ghosts: it turns out to be the theatre's old prompter (played by Daltry) who reveals that he sleeps in the theatre at night. Initially wallowing in self-pity, the old vaudevillian eventually rouses himself and relives his on-stage triumphs, belting out his greatest hits, including Hamlet and King Lear with the prompter feeding him his lines. As the has-been harangues the storm in the heath scene from Lear, the prompter drums up some thunder on a tambourine. They make an odd couple that recalls Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser, memorably brought to life on screen by Albert Finney as Sir, gradually sinking into dementia with his very own Fool at his side, the eponymous dresser, Norman (played by Tom Courtenay). 

Jennie Eggleton, Stephen Guy Daltry & Justin Butcher in The Bear

The final dish of the first half was The Bear. A peremptory creditor (played with enormous energy by great-coated and booted Justin Butcher) blusters his way into the drawing room of an impoverished widow (Jennie Eggleton) who owes him money. Shoving aside the ineffectual butler (Daltry), the ursine landowner works himself up into a rage, demanding a huge sum of cash to pay the interest on his mortgage. Ignoring the increasingly desperate pleading of the widow, the Bear installs himself in the drawing room, calling for drinks and making himself at home. Eventually, the outraged lady of the house challenges him to a duel and has her late husband’s duelling pistols brought down to the drawing room. Standing back to back, Widow and Bear prepare to face off and settle it once and for all. (I won’t say what happens next, in case you catch the show at a later date – but it’s a neat comic sleight of hand by the author of the better-known tragedies The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard.)

Justin Butcher & Jennie Eggleton in Chekhov's The Bear

More Russian tunes and even some dancing – and thus ends the first section of this highly original evening with the audience licking its fingers and dabbing them at the fritter and blini crumbs left on the plate / stage.

Stephen Guy Daltry, Ruper Mason, Justin Butcher & Jennie Eggleton in One was Nude...

All of which brings us to the main course and dessert combined: Dario Fo’s One was Nude & One wore Tails. It’s basically a shaggy dog story played out on stage. Starting with two Italian streetsweepers having a lopsided philosophical debate – taking in the meaning of life, the universe and everything, the conversation between the smarter of the two and his more synaptically-challenged mate leaves the latter flummoxed but somehow convinced that he is actually a manifestation of God. This wide-ranging banter probably works better in Italian or even in the salad of dialects that Fo lovingly assembled and dressed with wordplay, folk wisdom and all the other ingredients of his (re)creation of the language of the medieval giuillare (or wandering jester) and the fabulatore, the figure of the working-class storyteller that he came to revere and sought to model. While the evening’s fritters and blinis are decidedly Russian, “Bristin” is actually another culinary reference with a deeply personal significance for Dario Fo. It means “pepper seed” and was the nickname of his grandfather, a yarn-spinning itinerant merchant whom the young Dario accompanied on his rounds, sitting beside him on his wagon, soaking up the old man’s tall tales and learning his storytelling technique by osmosis.

Stephen Guy Daltry & Justin Butcher in Dario Fo's One was Nude...

The ‘Nude’ in One was Nude & One wore Tails refers to an ambassador (Daltry) who finds himself in a compromising situation following a swift exit from an amorous encounter. Still wearing his top hat – and nothing else – he takes refuge in the street sweeper’s bin. The one in 'Tails' is a man in a tux who cycles round town and goes into posh restaurants to sell flowers. There is also a lady of the night (Eggleton in shiny red mac and fishnets) who’s concerned about the Vice Squad. Authority comes in the form of the policeman (actually a Carabiniere played by Mason) who has a key role in re-establishing the bourgeois order that the anarchic action threatens to overturn.

Rupert Mason, Stephen Guy Daltry & Justin Butcher in One was Nude...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a nude ambassador in a bin must be in want of black tie so he can go home without alerting the suspicions of his wife. However, the proletarians he encounters during his naked odyssey end up bearing the brunt and taking the punishment for his misdeeds. (Here endeth Fo's riotous socialist lesson, which was the sort of thing that got him arrested and hounded by the authorities for most of his career, right up to the point when he won the Nobel and became pretty much untouchable. It's difficult to find a comparable figure in the English-speaking world: Dario Fo's career is intertwined with the rollercoaster politics of Italy in the 20th century.)

Rupert Mason & Jennie Eggleton in One was Nude & One wore Tails

The plot of One was Nude is convoluted and – as you might guess – farcical. At one point, the copper chases the ambassador (his modesty protected by a shopping bag worn like lederhosen) to the strains of The Benny Hill Show theme. (A thumbs up here for the excellent sound production, which also included comic-style sound effects when the rozzer administers some “hands on” policing to the street sweeper (and / or the flower seller – it’s a bit hazy now, your Honour).

Stephen Guy Daltry & Justin Butcher in One was Nude & One wore Tails

Reprising his role as accompanist, Daltry takes up his squeeze box again and the audience is invited to sing along to a rousing chorus of Bella Ciao, the Italian partisan anthem better known to younger audiences as the song that The Professor teaches to his city-named accomplices in the Spanish Netflix series Casa de Papel (unimaginatively rendered as Money Heist in the English version).

Stephen Guy Daltry, Justin Butcher, Jennie Eggleton & Rupert Mason in One was Nude...

Following a number of well-deserved curtain calls, Butcher came out onto the stage (now in civvies) and thanked Julia Holden, the theatre and the audience for the opportunity to bring Dario Fo in English back to to the stage in the city that he is most closely associated with. For Justin Butcher, this is obviously something of a mission and he has acknowledged Fo as his greatest theatrical influence. 

Poster with members of the cast: (anti-clockwise) Jennie Eggleton,
Justin Butcher, Rupert Mason & Stephen Guy Daltry

Overall, this was a deliciously satisfying evening of outstanding theatre featuring bravura performances by a group of highly talented actors, great music, brilliant costumes (especially the streetsweepers’ bowler hats – although I might be biased), a beautiful venue and “a lorra lorra laffs” (as the late, great Cilla Black might have put it).

As always, I await the next J Productions presentation with baited breath!

Your humble scribe (left) with the Welsh Cultural Attaché to Milan, Mr W. McHoya

Robert Dennis

January 28th 2024

Milan

About the Author

Robert Dennis is a Business English teacher based in Milan. He has been teaching for over 30 years both in the UK and in Italy. A long-time collaborator with John Peter Sloan, Robert published “Business English” (Gribaudo) in 2020. The book was launched with “Il Sole 24 Ore” and sold in newsstands throughout Italy. Robert has a website for people who want to learn Business English: payasyoulearn.com. The site features keywords and phrases, audio and exercises to help professionals improve their language skills. A graduate in English from Oxford University, Robert is also a translator and regular contributor to EasyMilano.com, the online magazine for expats.

Northern Italy pays special tribute to the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee with unexpected downpour

Torrential rain falls in Milan as Italians salute Her Majesty's 70th year on the throne. 

Only yesterday, the city of Milan was as humid and clammy as the armpit of a commuter holding onto the handrail of a suburban train. As pigeons struggled to find cool, shady spots and cats lounged luxuriously, thermometers turned blood red as the unrelenting heat slowly reduced the city to a burnt frazzle. But in a surprise move, the region has decided to send a positive post-Brexit message to the people of Britain and to Her Majesty the Queen in particular as she marks her 70th glorious year on the throne.

With perfect timing for the weekend, co-ordinated rain and hailstorms were delivered, completely crushing even the vaguest notion of enjoying a day out or just having a walk to the shops. Taking its cue from the UK, Lombardy has suddenly turned itself into a miserable, sodden island of depressed people glued to the TV and hunting for jumpers they had carefully packed away for the summer.

“I really feel like I’m back home in London,” said one long-term British resident of Milan, as he added two heaped spoons of tea leaves and one for the pot to the heavy brown ceramic teapot on his kitchen table. Sales of Marmite in the city’s expat shops have spiked and demand for crinkled orange cagoules at the region’s lakes has soared. Reports of disconsolate people sitting in caravans and playing Cluedo have yet to be confirmed, but it is understood that a woman in wellies with a Labrador was seen trudging across Piazza Duomo under a Radio 1 Smiley Miley golfing umbrella.

“We want to show the people of Great Britain that there is more to Italy than sunshine, outdoor aperitivos with Aperol Spritz and elegantly-served appetisers. We too are capable of producing gloomy, rain-soaked Saturday and Sunday afternoons when it actually seems like a good idea to sort your socks and underpants for the week ahead, rather than attending a chic gathering on a rooftop terrace with a DJ in a dinner jacket and a spectacular sunset,” said a spokesperson for the Lombardy Regional Planning Committee. 

While appreciated by the loyal subjects of Queen Elizabeth, the gesture on the part of the Milanese is not expected to interfere with the preparations for Republic Day on June 2nd, which should see hordes of cheerful Italians basking in bright sunshine. However, the traditional Bank Holiday deluge in the UK may still be averted due to the extended length of the break, which includes two extra days of festivities to mark the Queen’s Platinum Jubilee. Since public holidays almost never fall on a Thursday, the fine weather that invariably accompanies the working week in Great Britain should still be available, even though people will be outside in the street sitting at long tables and toasting the Queen with plastic cups of lukewarm Tesco’s prosecco.

© Robert Dennis 2022

robertdennis.it

Funny Conversation: the Swab Test

Mary is talking to Salvatore.

Mary: Hi, Salvatore. How’s it going? 
Salvatore: Oh, hi Mary. Fine thanks, what about you?
Mary: Yeah, not bad. So, what have you been doing?
Salvatore: Well, yesterday, I made a tampon test.
Mary: (drops her cup of coffee and there’s a loud CRASH!! and coffee goes all over the table). I beg your pardon???!!!!!
Salvatore: What do you mean… I beg…?
Mary: Oh, erm, “I beg your pardon” is a very formal way of saying “Excuse me?”. You say this when you haven’t heard what someone said – or you don’t understand it.
Salvatore: Oh, I see. Say it again.
Mary: (drops her coffee again) I beg your pardon???
Salvatore: I made a tampon test.
Mary: Er, what do you mean?
Salvatore: Well, I went to the clinic and I made a test…
Mary: Sorry, do you mean, you HAD a test? … You DID a test?
Salvatore: Yes, that’s right. I did a test.
Mary: For what?
Salvo: To see if I’ve got coronavirus.
Mary: Oh, I see! So, you did a swab test?
Salvo: What’s that?
Mary: Well, a swab is like a big cotton bud.
Salvo: A cotton bud?
Mary: Yeah, it’s a sort of stick with a piece of cotton wool on the end.
Salvo: Oh, you mean a cotton fioc?
Mary: A what?
Salvo: A cotton fioc. You know, like Johnson’s cotton fioc.
Mary: I’ve never heard of that.
Salvo: Oh, I thought that was the English name.
Mary: No. No-one in the English-speaking world has EVER used the expression “cotton fioc”. We say “cotton bud” in the UK and in America they say “cotton swab” or “Q-tip”.
Salvo: Oh, that’s strange.
Mary: So, what happened?
Salvo: Well, they put this big… cotton BUD in the back of my throat and up my nose and made a sample.
Mary: Do you mean they took a sample?
Salvo: Yeah, they took a sample.
Mary: Ah, OK, I see.
Salvo: So, you don’t say tampon test?
Mary: (drops her coffee again). NO!! That’s a really strange thing to say, Salvo.
Salvo: Er, why?
Mary: Well, a tampon is something that women use once a month.
Salvo: (silent, mouth open) Uh?
Mary: Yeah, a tampon is “un assorbente”.
Salvo: Oh my God!
Mary: So, when you said you did a tampon test, that sounds… hmm, really strange, Salvo, unless you work in a company that makes tampons.
Salvo: Oh my God!! I’ve been saying to all my international colleagues “I am doing a tampon test” and no-one replied.
Mary: Yeah, I’m not surprised.
Salvo: So, I should say “I did a swab test”, then?
Mary: Yeah, exactly. You did a swab test, not a tampon test.
Salvo: Hmm…. English is really confusing, isn’t it?
Mary: Yeah, I suppose it is. Anyway, what was the result?
Salvo: It was negative.
Mary: Oh, well, thank God for that.
Salvo: Yes, indeed.

Vocabulary and Notes

How’s it going? - Come va?

I beg your pardon? - Mi scusi? 

have / do a test - fare un'esame / test (NOT "make a test")

a swab test - test del tampone

swab - tampone  

cotton bud - cotton fioc (marca di Johnson & Johnson in Italia)

cotton wool - ovatta

cotton swab - cotton floc (US)

Q-tip - cotton fioc (US) di Unilever)

take a sample - prendere un campione

tampon - un assorbente

I did a swab test - ho fatto il tampone

anyway - comunque 

result - risultato

© Robert Dennis 2022, Milan English Blog

Under Milk Wood comes to Milan with a stunning performance to help Ukraine

Guy Masterson-Mastroianni in Dylan Thomas's Under Milk Wood, J Productions

Tonight was a rare opportunity: the chance to see the incredible Guy Masterson-Mastroianni performing all 69 roles of Dylan Thomas’s Under Milk Wood in a special charity performance for Ukraine at the Filodrammatici Theatre in Milan, thanks to Julia Holden and J Productions. 

Guy Masterson-Mastroianni was absolutely incredible, transforming himself physically and vocally into all the characters of the 20th century classic set in the fictional Welsh town of Llareggub (or "Bugger All" in reverse). With minimal staging – literally, just a chair – and a few props (sunglasses, pint glass), Guy brings the story to life, switching between the various personalities that inhabit Thomas’s dreamscape – from the blind Captain Cat, reliving his seafaring times, to the baker Dai Bread with his two wives, the Mrs Dai Breads, and from Organ Morgan, obsessed with the music of Johann Sebastian Bach to Polly Garter, pining for her dead lover. Masterson-Mastroianni’s performance veers from a portrayal of skipping and chanting children in the playground to surly, hawking fishermen on the quayside, and from the poetic Reverend Eli Jenkins’s sermons to Sinbad the lovestruck publican at The Sailors’ Arms, who yearns for schoolteacher Gossamer Beynon.

The lighting and audio were matched flawlessly, with the almost cinematic precision of sound effects and atmospheric music by Matt Clifford, combining to create a rich, lyrical texture complementing the performance (in English).

Guy Masterson, who is actually the great nephew of Sir Richard Burton, was inspired to become an actor by his great uncle’s rendition of Under Milk Wood, which was commissioned by the BBC in 1954 as a radio drama by Dylan Thomas and later adapted for the stage. Guy has performed the piece over 2,000 times and, as he told us after the show, it is actually a “symphony” which carries him along with its intricate rhythms. Running at 100 minutes, his performance is not only a dramatic tour-de-force but also an impressive feat of memory in its own right.

All proceeds from the show, which was supported by law firm Trevisan & Cuonzo, will go to helping Ukrainian refugees.

Robert Dennis
https://robertdennis.it/

Guy Masterson-Mastroianni, Julia Holden and the J Productions team

Guy Masterson-Mastroianni with Robert Dennis

Swingin' London comes to Milan, courtesy of Mark Worden and Alfredo Marziano

Swinging London 

A Field Guide 

by Mark Worden and Alfredo Marziano 

The term Swinging London entered the language in 1965 when Time magazine ran a cover story on the subject. More than fifty years later, the idea is still very much alive. This book takes the reader to the places that made London swing. 

Fully illustrated throughout, Swingin’ London: A Field Guide looks at some of the most important locations in the scene and reveals what became of them. It is based on extensive research and entertaining reminiscences by the bright young things who frequented them. They include Private Eye cartoonist and A Whole Scene Going presenter Barry Fantoni, Groupie author Jenny Fabian and musician Brian Auger, as well as some late greats like actress Anita Pallenberg, ‘Social Deviant’ Mick Farren, artist Duggie Fields and album cover designer Storm Thorgerson. The result is an affectionate and informative tribute to a bygone era – a time when London appeared to be the centre of life on earth.

Multi-media Presentation

Après-coup, Porta Romana provided the perfect setting for Mark and Alfredo's presentation of Swingin' London on Thursday 25th November 2021, with music and video clips from the interviews, entertainingly and expertly narrated by Mark (mainly in Italian with some English for good measure). He was also joined on stage by James Clough, who shared some reminiscences from the heady days of the 1960s. It was a truly memorable evening and a chance to see "old" friends and make some new ones. 

Swinging London: A Field Guide by Mark Worden and Alfredo Marziano is available in both print and digital format (Kindle) from Amazon, IBS.it and in all good bookshops. It's the perfect Christmas gift for anybody visiting or living in London who wants to explore this fascinating part of the capital's history.

39 fashion words: video and language activity

 

 Do you love fashion? Are you excited by great design, colours and textures? Do you like to create a unique look that expresses your personality? Watch this video from payasyoulearn.com featuring 39 words that you can use to talk about fashion! Learn some useful vocabulary that you can use to talk about looking your best in the day and going out in the evening. Then, try the vocabulary exercises which use all the words and phrases from the video. You have to choose the correct verb – and sometimes the correct form of the verb – to complete the sentence.