In the coldest night of the world, strange phenomena can occur, and this is what happens in «The Mechanics of the Heart» by Mathias Malzieu, on stage Saturday 17 and Sunday 18 February, at 9.00 pm, at the Pozzo and Pendulum theatre, with Marianita Carfora, Sonia De Rosa, Fabio Rossi, Alfredo Mundo, Adriana d'Agostino, sets by Elio Rivera, adaptation and direction by Annamaria Russo.
It is 1874 and in an old house on top of the highest hill in Edinburgh little Jack is born with a completely frozen heart. The bizarre midwife Madeleine, considered by many a witch, will save the newborn by applying a cuckoo clock to his defective heart. The prosthesis is as ingenious as it is fragile and extreme feelings could prove fatal. Love, above all.
But one cannot live sheltered from emotions and, on Jack's tenth birthday, the bewitching voice of a little Andalusian singer makes his heart vibrate like never before. The fearless hero, now in love, is willing to do anything for her.
He is not afraid of escape or violence, not even a journey across half of Europe to Granada, in search of the enchanting creature, in the company of the skilled illusionist Georges Méliès.
And finally, two delicate figures, out of the schemes, meet again and love each other. Love is a sweet discovery, but also torment and pain, and Jack will soon experience it.
«The pages of Mathias Malzieu - emphasizes Annamaria Russo - are so vivid and colorful that they seem to indicate the way to the staging. It is never easy to transform words into theatrical images, but with The Mechanics of the Heart the work has been made light by the visionary fantasy that oozes from every line of the novel. The characters are already sketched in three dimensions, the words seem written to be said».
Imbued with atmospheres, punctuated by chivalrous adventures, «The Mechanics of the Heart» is, at the same time, an engaging fable and a coming-of-age novel, in which the author, with light and evocative writing, dotted with irony, traces an unforgettable metaphor about the feeling of love, inevitable in its mysterious complexity.
The greatest and most complex parable, in fact, concerns the relationship between a human being and his identity, the expectations inherited from parents and consensual society, and the difficult path of discovering what is most authentic beats under the mechanics of our heart.