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foot, like that of Philictetes, but more frightening because it is a limb detached from its body. Later, when the sack is lowered to the ground, the body tries to emerge but is immediately covered by a half sphere. Through a hole, an arm now emerges, its fist clutched tightly. The torturer uses instruments to open up the fingers one by one and removes a walnut that is then cracked and its contents offered to a member of the audience. When finally the creature seems to have freed himself and to shout fleefully the word »Io« (I) several times, he is captured again by the torturer, now wearing a steel mask which confirms his robot identity. The victim is enveloped in a cloak, and dragged off stage. Nothing could be more pessimistic than the Remondi Caporossi vision of man’s fate. There is no hope either in » Richiamo « in which the victim and his torturer emerge from an inflated globe. Thirty minutes of the seventy minute action are taken up with the laborious progress from end of the acting area to the other of a weird machine, half tractor, half printing press (the first machine?), which is moved by the passing of steel bars over hinged planks. The two men labor to create the mechanical means of survival but fail to communicate between themselves. Remondi and Caporossi use images rather than words to express the allegory of human despair. They don’t offer solutions any more than Beckett does. They make us laugh a lot. Of course we laugh when we see people in trouble. For centuries we have laughed a at Pulcinella, or Punch, being hit on the head. Remondi and Caporossi seem to be interested in getting the audience more and more involved in the responsibility for causing pain to others. We laugh at some of the clowning but we cringe at some of the blows. Maybe, the direction they are taking is to remove the barrier of fiction. (John Francis Lane, Daily America, 15. 6. 1976) I Les Italiens étaient I , \ présents au festival de Nancy, les Italiens êÊÊf à nancy Hw Л et leur histoire, qui est celle de ÿgî leurs langages et des silences. Claudio Remondi et Riccardo Caporossi( Teatro Club), eux, n’ont pas d’autre vocabulaire que celui des gestes quotidiens, montrés hors de propos dans un absurde délirant, celui de la société industrielle. Pendant une heure, Remondi et Caporossi font rouler un grand essieu rouillé à roues crantées sur des barres de fer qu’ils disposent au fur et à mesure. Ils se collettent avec des constructions extrêmement compliquées, qui s’écroulent brusquement, présentent des tours de magie dérisoire, et parallèlement, détournent les

objets de leur fonction initiale. Ils déploient une activité fébrile à base d’inutilité. Ils pourraient venir du monde de Beckett ou de celui de Harpo Marx s’ils n’étaient Italiens. Le goût du non-rentable, du luxe fait partie d’eux, de leur longue histoire. Ils le reconnaissent, le raillent, l’utilisent pour dénoncer la stupidité d’une société qui veut nier la nécessité du non-rentable, du luxe, et y substitue les gestes vides de la production. Au rire désespéré ou destructeur, ils préfèrent l’ironie aiguë, leur agressivité se pare d’élegance, de grâce de poésie affinée. Ils sont les clowns du merveilleux. (Collette Godard, Le Monde, 21, 5. 1975)