Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters

Giorgio Strehler died in 1997, 50 years after founding the Piccolo Teatro di Milano and presenting as one of the young company’s first productions a revival of Carlo Goldoni’s 1745 commedia dell’arte classic Arlecchino, Servant of Two Masters. His version, which he restaged nine times with the intention of continually refining it, was a hit then and is still considered the masterwork of Italy’s greatest 20th-century director, Theater lovers can found out why at the Lincoln Center Festival through Saturday.

It’s easy to understand why so many accolades have been tossed at Strehler’s stylized and stylish treatment of Goldoni’s comedy. In launching his outfit a half-century ago, Strehler made theater history, looking forward by looking backwards. He reinvigorated Arlecchino by presenting it as it might have looked when Goldoni decided in the middle of the 18th century that it was high time to codify the long-developing commedia dell’arte tradition.

Strehler’s idea was to demonstrate how a troupe of players might have performed the play in a 16th-century Venetian drawing-room, where they would have placed risers and background curtains that they could pull on a wire in order to indicate locale changes. For the current incarnation, set designer Ezio Frigerio obliged with, in particular, one curtain suggesting Canaletto’s sumptuous views of Venice. (That artist was at the height of his fame when Goldoni was writing.) Costume designer Franca Squarciapino also pitched in with simple but elegant costumes of the sort that Antoine Watteau had painted earlier in the 18th century as his commentary on melancholy entertainers. Arlecchino’s familiar body suit of multi-colored diamonds is featured, as are Venetian clown masks by Amleto Sartori and Donato Sartori.

Strehler presents a play within a play. When the actors step off the center-stage risers, they drop their characters; a prompter leafing through a worn script comments on how he thinks the players are doing; musicians gather to accompany the occasional “on-stage” singing; and the actors spell each other in carrying multitudinous props. There is plenty of by-play and much perching on benches to observe the others as the characters’ shenanigans are enacted.

The ingenious goofball Arlecchino (Ferruccio Soleri) attends to two masters who are unaware that he’s drawing dual salaries. Beatrice Rasponi (Pia Lanciotti) has come to Venice disguised as her late brother, Federigo; she aims to resume her love affair with Florindo Aretusi (Sergio Leone). Florindo happens to be her brother’s murderer, but that doesn’t seem to have cooled the lady’s ardor. Beatrice pretends to court Clarice (Sara Zola), the daughter of commedia dell’arte’s other adored stock character, Pantalone (Giorgio Bongiovanni). The thick-skulled Pantalone, having had news of Federigo’s demise, agrees to allow Clarice — who was once Federigo’s intended — to marry her chosen swain, Silvio (Stefano Onofri), son of the gargantuan Dr. Lombardi (Paolo Calabresi).

Where the famished Arlecchino figures into all this is that he’s been retained by both Beatrice and Florindo and must try to satisfy the pair of them, which he accomplishes only intermittently. More often, he’s preoccupied with filling his stomach and handing off letters to the wrong recipients, confusing his masters’ belongings and wielding his actual slapstick. In the end, the romantic lovers are united, Pantalone is mollified — and Arlecchino, finally fed, is exonerated and betrothed to Clarice’s man-suspicious maid, Smeraldina (Alessandra Gigli).

If there is a fly in the 260-year-old ointment, it’s that Goldoni’s mentality doesn’t completely mesh with our early 21st-century notions of what’s amusing. Too many of the Arlecchino sequences are forced and flat. (Having to shift one’s eyes high above the stage to read surtitles is no help.) One way of putting it is to say that Benny Hill fans will get their jollies more than Jon Stewart enthusiasts. Nevertheless, the veteran Ferruccio Soleri (who is about to turn 75) has a hilarious interlude wherein he mimes capturing a fly, pulling off its wings, and eating it. There is also a brilliant sequence during which Arlecchino and colleagues set plates of food flying so that he can serve his masters their separate repasts.

When I saw Arlecchino at the Odeon in Paris in the summer of 1997, just a few months before Strehler died, the only illumination appeared to be nine candles at the edge of the stage. That effect, which I’m told was enhanced by cleverly concealed artificial illumination, lent a charmed aura to the production — as if it were materializing from a bygone era. Although there are candles present in the Lincoln Center version (Gerardo Modica is the lighting designer), they are only lit towards the end of the third and final act. The effect is lost, as has been the case with other Strehler productions since his demise. Perhaps this sort of thing occurs whenever a supreme practitioner dies and his successors must serve two masters: the creator and themselves. But sometimes, as Goldoni illustrates, both masters are ultimately well served.