The Neapolitan director Francesco Saponaro directs the Sicilian scene's great new company in two short comedies by De Filippo: Dolore sotto chiave (1958) and Pericolosamente (1938). Two one-act plays rarely witnessed on the stage, full of black humour, which will be preceded by I pensionati della memoria, by Pirandello (1914). Three shows for one.



Dolore sotto chiave
After working as an engineer in Sardinia, Rocco Capasso returns to his sister Lucia’s home. For the last eleven months, she’s been taking care of his wife, who is at death’s door. Lucia doesn’t let Rocco see Elena, claiming that doing so might kill her. Fed up with being left on the sidelines during his wife’s death throes, Rocco barges into her room and is shocked to find it empty. Lucia confesses that Elena died months earlier, and that she has been hiding the truth so he wouldn’t suffer. Rocco is outraged: for months, he has been in love with another woman – who will soon bear his child – yet she has grown sick of waiting and recently left him for another man. Talk about a double blow: grief and sorrow, both spirited away. Meanwhile, the neighbors start knocking at their door to express their condolences.

Pericolosamente
Michele returns to Naples from the United States and his friend Arturo offers to rent him a room in his house. When Michele comes to see the room, he meets Dorotea, Arturo's wife, who explains to him that her husband loses his temper every day and angrily shoots her. He has tried to murder her several times in two years of marriage, but she has been miraculously saved. Michele is horrified by this confession. Then Arturo arrives.