It is not an easy job to write about something which may not exist. Theatre? Does it still exist? And Italian theatre? Has it ever existed? Many people doubt it. Italian opera existed once, but what about Italian comedy and Italian drama? As far as I know, people have always spoken of them as being in crisis.

At times I try to find comfort in the thought that when something is in crisis, it probably exists. If I remember correctly, St. Anselm tried to prove the existence of God with a rather similar demonstration—but he succeeded only in proving that men desire God. So we might say that Italian theatre has been living for many centuries in mente italicorum, which does not mean that it has found its own reality in a living body of images, characters, stories, and styles. When we talk about it with foreigners, the conversation slides immediately to commedia dell'arte, to opera, and to neo-realistic movies.

The Piccolo Teatro of the city of Milan, now entering its seventeenth year, represents both the result of a historical movement for the renewal of the Italian theatre and an entirely new phenomenon whose methods and orientations have served as a model for many similar organizations. Historical precedents can be found in the sustained efforts of persons like Eduardo Boutet, Eleonora Duse, Luigi Pirandello, and Silvio D'Amico; it was they who encouraged the Italian theatre to organize in permanent companies and to improve its technical and aesthetic levels, thus putting it on a par with the theatres of leading foreign countries.

When the Piccolo Teatro began in 1947, the Italian theatre was characterized by two traditions: the star, and the traveling company. Throughout Europe the day of the great director (Stanislavski, Reinhardt, Copeau, etc.) had ended; but in Italy it had not yet begun.

Eduardo De Filippo bewilders the critics. His comedies raise a number of problems which are not easily disentangled: the relation between the playwright he has become and the actor he has always been; his language, which is neither standard nor dialect; his link to the tradition of the commedia dell'arte; his relation to pirandellismo, surrealism, and neo-realism; the nature of his comedy and the quality of his morality; the burden and function of his Neapolitan settings. One could even ask whether there is a line of development in his work: how can we explain that a true masterpiece like Christmas in the Cupiello Home came fifteen years before the series of plays that fulfilled its promise: Naples’ Millionaires, Oh, These Ghosts!, Filumena, The Voices from Within, My Beloved and My Heart. And finally, what role did World War II play in De Filippo's development?

We enter the theatre. There is no curtain. A raked stage extends well beyond the formal proscenium arch, reaching in almost desperate appeal to the potential responsiveness of the audience. We see what appears to be an enormous, high-beamed gallery, a candle chandelier hanging over a floor of heavy oak boards, supporting only the barest of furnishings, surrounded on three sides by towering, dark, red-brick walls, with a delicately curtained archway breaking the upstage center wall. This is the only suggestion of mobility in the entire set. All else is weighted, durable, lived-in, lending the atmosphere a peculiar, autumnally-colored sense of permanence. This room, we feel, is definitely in a theatre, but just as surely it has known life, an existence away from us, somewhere remote, in a past that we had comfortably connected only with the pleasing unreality of history. Like most English rooms, it seems to be weathered by a stern assumption that winter belongs inside as much as out.