"Letters from an Unknown Woman". The Story of a Furious Love

"Know that it is a dead person telling you her life. That it was yours, until her last hour". There is much beauty in this fragment. The subtle play of possessive adjectives, which almost seem to dance. While quickly introducing that (heartbreaking) atmosphere of mystery that fuels the entire novel. In short: refined writer Stefan Zweig , prolific, restless like many of his characters, rigorously pacifist and anti-fascist in the very complicated Europe of the early twentieth century. At a certain point the Nazis considered him "the most dangerous Jewish intellectual". But he was already in Brazil, with his wife. And he thought of interrupting an existence that was now unbearable for him. Fascinating profile. Like many of his works. It is therefore pleasing how Factory32 decided to dedicate an entire trilogy to him, begun last year with "Paura". Dramatic investigation.

In unforeseen territories of Central European literature. Strongly desired by Valentina Pescetto, director of the Milanese theater factory in via Giacomo Watt. And it is there that " Letter from an Unknown Woman " debuts on May 16, directed by Alberto Oliva, with Enrico Ballardini and Chiara Arrigoni on stage, the latter also author of the text based on Zweig's story. Where we are accompanied into the horizons of Vienna in the 1920s. The protagonist is a famous writer. Or rather: the unrequited passion that a young woman has always harbored towards him. From the first glance she cast on that somewhat bohemian intellectual, when she was still a young girl, his neighbor. Since then a furious love. Unresolved. Consummated yet hidden. Also a mirror of all the economic and social difficulties that characterized those seasons. "The modernity of Zweig's work is surprising – Chiara Arrigoni emphasizes – Although it is more than a century old, at times this text seems like a photograph of our time, an era in which feelings, distorted, transform into forms of obsessive attachment". A story told backwards. Through the letter of the title. The one that the writer finds waiting for him in his own home. A few pages. For the story of an existence. Of a night of love that led to the birth of a son raised in solitude.

In the midst of dozens of encounters and wounds. Until the sudden death of the child, due to that flu that is traveling through Europe. She has caught it too. The protagonist. She feels she has little time now. And if the man is reading the letter, it is because there is no more time even for a last answer. Ferocious. To be discovered. Reruns until May 18. Info: factory32.it. Diego Vincenti