Here are the lost kids: cult play on stage «The first reading of the script scared me, then intrigued me and I started loving it. To this day I can not deny that my eyes shine thinking of “The Pitchfork Disney”». Few words explain what urged Elena Vannoni on directing the piece of novelist Philip Ridley, on stage at Teatro dell’Orologio until April 15. Ridley – author of the famous “In the eyes of Mr. Fury” – marks with this play the revival of British theatre, dealing the difcult theme of social isolation of youth with originality and terror. The play centers around the story of the twins Haley and Presley Stray, locked for ten years in their one-room apartment in the East End of London, since the mysterious disappearance of their parents. A connement made of daily rituals and terrible nightmares, but broken by the arrival of an entertainer, Cosmo Disney, and his dumb assistant, Pitchfork Cavalier. Elena Vannoni explains: «The world inside their apartment becomes a sort of “mental room”, where the relationship between the two twins is confrmed through the ritualization, vacuous, yet necessary to keep themselves alive. The world outside repesents our fears, anything we escape from». The show, played by Andrea Peghinelli, Elisabetta Pastore, Francesco Mastrorilli and Simone Di Pascasio, nd its climax in the long Presley’s monologue, dened by the director as a “moment of truth” about the exhausting ght of a child who tries to grow up. But it is the theme of the marginalization that plays a key role in the piece. «The protagonists created an enchanted world in order not to face the reality. Which subject could be more topical and relevant than this? –Vannoni closes – We live in a virtual world, where we lost any relationship between cause and effect, as everything is ltered by the irreality».

in L’Unità