Souls of Naples

John Turturro heads the cast of Theatre for a New Audience’s spring production, the American premiere of the bittersweet comedy, Souls of Naples (Questi Fantasmi! is the Italian title), written in 1946 by Italy’s leading popular dramatist, Eduardo De Filippo. Roman Paska will stage a new translation of the play commissioned by Theatre for a New Audience from author and Village Voice critic Michael Feingold.

Pasquale, forty-five-years old, lower middle-class and a failure at everything he has tried, is married to Maria, nearly twenty years younger. Discouraged by lack of work, Pasquale wants financial success — which he thinks will save his marriage. He becomes the caretaker of a rent free 16th-century, 18-room palace supposedly haunted by a Spanish aristocrat and his lover who were walled up by an outraged husband several centuries earlier. No one will move in because of the ghosts. Pasquale needs to prove the palace is safe so he can turn it into a boardinghouse for paying guests by renovating at his expense. When Pasquale discovers Maria with her lover Alfredo, he deludes himself into thinking Alfredo is a ghost. But the lover, too, like every character in this romp on the verge of tragedy, is haunted by his past. As ghosts and farcical complications multiply, De Filippo looks deep into the souls of people who suffer and struggle in the crumbling, frenetic world of post-World War II Naples.

No Performances: Tuesday, 4/19 @8pm, Sunday, 4/24 @7pm, Sunday, 5/8 @7pm

Time Change: Thursday, 4/14 @7pm (Opening night)