Latest Play By Pirandello

Sun (Auckland), Volume III, Issue 857, 28 December 1929, Page 22

Latest Play By Pirandello

A STARTLING PROBLEM ITALIAN PLAYWRIGHT’S SUCCESS Pirandello s new play, “O di Uno o di Nessuno” (“To One or to No One”), was given for the first time at Turin last month and won an immediate success. The plot deals with one of those startling problems, half-physiological, half-psychological, in which Pirandello delights because, according to him, they represent life as it really Is. In this case we havp two friends, Carlo Sanna and Tito Morena, who set up house with one woman—quiet, good-tempered, economical, and apparently equally devoted to both. Suddenly she discovers that she is about to become a mother, and the situation changes. Whose is the child? According to law, a child must belong either “to one or to no one, - '* and Carlo and Tito decide, after much discussion, that it shall be handed over to an institution as the child of no one. The baby is born and the mother dies. The two men then fight for the

possession of the child with a grim determination which threatens to destroy their friendship. Finally the question is settled by the offer of a neighbour, who has just lost her own baby, to adopt that of Meline. Another problem play by Pirandello, “Come tu ml vuoi,” will shortly be produced in Turin by the Company of Marta Abba, the clever young actress who, after being * leading woman in Pirandello’s own company for several years, has now entered into management on her own. The idea of “Come tu mi vuoi” (“As you wish me”) is taken from the famous BruneriCannella case of undecided identity which has been puzzling the legal world in Italy for the last three years and still continues to do so.

Lazarus,” which has already been performed in England, is about to be produced in the United States under the management of Charles Hopkins. Pirandello is now at work on “Gli Dei della Montagna,” his thirtyseventh play, and, he says, probably his last. He is also engaged in revising a new and complete edition of 'nis works, and when that is done he intends to retire to some remote country-place in Italy to write his novel, “Adam and Eve,” which, being “of vast proportions,” will, he expects, take him at least five years to finish.