By Graham Pitts
At Playbox until March 1996
Reviewer: Kate Herbert, reviewed around 21 Feb 1996
Emma: Celebrazione, the word "celebrazione" tells all. There is singing, dancing, a wedding, cooking, eating and pure unadulterated joy on stage. When, at the finale, the real Emma Ciccotosto came on stage she was greeted not merely by a cast but by "family".
Laura Lattuada plays Emma with an unbeatable charm and warmth engaging an entire audience with wry glances, quips, adages and reminiscences. We become her guests, her confidantes in this lively, almost edible script by Graham Pitts.
Pitts' stage adaptation of Emma's life story employs a format popular over the years in community/political theatre. Characters talk directly to us in brief monologues. Pitts intercuts memories, characters from Emma's past who interrupt her cooking for her daughter's wedding and her thoughts, interject and Emma replays scenes from her past with us as her intimate companions. Emma, through her daughter's marriage, is re-framing her own hasty, shameful marriage.
In addition to Lattuada's tour de force as Emma, three other skilful actors help create the story. Chantal Contouri as Emma's terrifying, hyper-critical mother-in-law is riveting. Kate Jason-Ormondei embodies the generous spirit of everybody's Italian mamma and Robert Forza people's the stage with an array of rich characters but is most adorable as Emma's gambling, philandering husband.
Emma is an event, not a play. The choir, La Voce della Luna, comprising more
than 40 Italian women (lead by the inimitable musical force of Kavisha Mazzella
and musician John Norton) adds volume, pride and joy and a sense of community.
"Courage is the price life desires before you have peace." Emma's home-cooked wisdom. These women struggled in Italy then here, on isolated farms, during the war when Italians were interned, separated from families, stranded in a strange culture.
Emma is a celebrazione of their survival.
Corraggio! Fight on! As one of the songs says, "Although we are women we are not afraid. We have one big beautiful tongue with which to defend ourselves."
KATE HERBERT
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