Absolutely Perhaps

Description

A brand new adaptation of Pirandello's first play. No one has ever seen Signor Ponza's wife and her mother, Signora Frola together. Also, the neighbours have become suspicious because Signora Ponza never leaves her home and start asking questions. Ponza claims that this wife is really his second wife, the first having died in an earthquake that destroyed all records. Meanwhile his wife only pretends to be Signora Frola's daughter to humour Signora Frola, who, he claims, is insane. Thoroughly bewildered, Agazzi demands to meet Ponza's wife, who arrives heavily veiled proclaiming herself as both the daughter of Signora Frola and the second wife of Signor Ponza. Absolutely! {Perhaps} is brilliant comedy on the elusive nature of identity and reality and, like all of Pirandello's work, shows truth as subjective and relative and drama itself a mystery.Absolutely! {Perhaps} is published to coincide with the production at London's Wyndham's theatre starring Joan Plowright and directed by Franco Zeffirelli.

Luigi Pirandello was born in Sicily in 1867 and died in Rome in 1936, where he had first settled as a professional writer in 1893. The following year he married a woman whose mental health collapsed in 1904 leading finally to her commitment to an asylum in 1919. he was already well-known as a novelist and critic before achieving international recognition as a playwright with Absolutely! (Perhaps) - originally translated as Right You Are! (If You Think You Are) in 1917, The Rules of the Game (1918), Six Characters in Search of an Author (1921), Henry IV (1922), The Man with the Flower in his Mouth (1923), As You Desire Me (1930), Each in His Own Way (1924) and Tonight We Improvise (1929), the last two forming a trilogy with Six Characters. Of his forty-three plays, over half are adaptations from his own short stories written during the most difficult period of his life (1910-1918). He established and directed his own theatre in Rome, the Teatro D'Arte (1925-1928), and in 1934 he was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature.