Debut: Rome, Teatro Valle, 3 March 1953
Direction | Vittorio Gassman e Luigi Squarzina |
Set and costume | Mario Chiari |
Production | Teatro d’Arte Italiano directed by Vittorio Gassman and Luigi Squarzina |
Characters and performers
Enrico Rambelli | Franco Pastorino |
Elisa, her sister | Anna Proclemer |
Mauro Bartoli | Luca Ronconi |
Linda, his sister | Margherita Autuori |
Gianni | Luigi Vannucchi |
Enrico's mother | Luisa Gassman |
Enrico's father | Pietro Cesari |
Germanico Piana, headmaster | Vittorio Gassman |
Professor Casalis | Gianni Cavalieri |
Professor Clemente | Lucio Ardenzi |
A professor of gymnasium | Mico Cundari |
Inspector General Butti | Mario Feliciani |
Beniamino, janitor | Ferruccio Stagni |
A peasant | Maria Zanoli |
A schoolboy | Aristide Peraccini |
Another schoolboy | Renato Mori |
Written by Squarzina and directed by Gassman, Tre Quarti di Luna was honoured with the 1953 Saint Vincent Prize for dramatic innovation, garnering resounding success with both audiences and critics who were impressed by its dramatic charge and tension from the first scene to last, as well as with the mastery of the action montages, the configuration of characters, the powerful language, the skilled dosing of progressions, and the refined technique of movements and plot twists. An acerbic yet authentic comedy, it makes a clear denouncement while maintaining an artistic vision all the while. The play – which holds the Gentile educational reform as the Italian twentieth century’s ideological and moral core – stresses the need for the teaching relationship to be free of ideological preconceptions and of factionalisms, while conversely emphasizing the pupils’ need for cultural autonomy. Tre Quarti di Luna [“Three-Quarter Moon”] marked Luca Ronconi’s acting debut and the end of the Squarzina-Gassman partnership. Tre quarti di luna marks Luca Ronconi’s debut as an actor and the end of the Squarzina-Gassman partnership.
(A proposito dell’incontro con Ronconi al Burcardo o alla Biblioteca Nazionale)
“Comunque sia mi incuriosì e mi piacque, aveva le fisique du role e sapeva recitare bene, per lui fu l’inizio di una grande carriera. Luca ha lavorato come me per circa sette anni, in spettacoli importanti, come Lorenzaccio, Romagnola, J.B., La congiura, ecc.”.
Luigi Squarzina
From E. Testoni, Dialoghi con Squarzina, Firenze, Le Lettere 2015, p. 109