THE Neapolitan Novels and the mystery that surrounds the identity of the famed author Elena Ferrante has fascinated me, and the many friends I have recommended the books to, for years. When SKY Atlantic released their dramatised TV series of the first novel, My Brilliant Friend, I devoured it, lavishing in the ability to put faces to the names I had long envisioned in my mind. I eagerly awaited the ensuing books to also be adapted to television but this was in vain. So when I happened upon a tube advert on my way home from work for the theatre production of all four novels at the National Theatre I was ecstatic.
My Brilliant Friend at the National Theatre. Image: Marc Brenner
Following a sell-out run at Rose Theatre Kingston, the acclaimed two-part adaptation of Elena Ferrante’s My Brilliant Friend novels by April De Angelis has been reworked for the Olivier stage by Melly Still. The total performance time is five and a half hours, and the National Theatre accommodates for the duration by offering tickets for performances either across two-nights or as a two-show day. I opted for a two-show day.
As the performance begins, the sound of an Apple Mac turning on fills the room. From the back of the stage emerges Lenu Greco, now a celebrated author, who rushes to her laptop to reply to her emails – a clever indication of the modern-day time. A parcel has arrived for her, two dolls, which she insists could only have been sent by “one person”. Lenu then begins to recall the 60-year relationship with her missing friend, Lila Cerullo, who hasn’t been seen by Lenu in years. We are then catapulted back to their first interaction, at the mere age of 12, when a game with the very two dolls referenced just prior cements the future of their fractious friendship. The two friends are sent on differing paths of adulthood, with Lenu’s parents paying for her education and subsequent rise to author stardom, whereas Lila’s precocious intelligence is dismissed by her father who insists she is to work for him in his shoe mending shop. Despite this, Lila is constantly referred to, if not at points reluctantly by Lenu, as a marvel with a wasted natural intellect.
My Brilliant Friend at the National Theatre. Image: Marc Brenner
The financially dependent access to education, combined with traditional family values that ushered women into marriage or procreation, meant Lila’s situation was typical for a working-class girl in post-war Italy. The play unpicks these limiting circumstances as it follows the female characters become increasingly mobilised and radicalised, defying the expected passivity, or “dissolving boundaries” as Lila refers to it. Yet, despite the play being set almost 60 years ago, the road to gender equality trod by defiant women like Leila and Lenu remains steep even today, with low rates of female employment remaining low even in 2020. This play is, therefore, a sobering reminder of how far we have yet to go.
My Brilliant Friend at the National Theatre. Image: Marc Brenner
Niamh Cusack and Catherine McCormack, who return to the roles they originated as Lenu and Lila, are ferociously convincing as 12-year-olds as they paint a picture of young competitiveness, patriarchal society and the turmoils faced by the Neapolitan youth in the 1950s. Each of the four halves of April De Angelis’ adaption represents a book, and the ability to cram in such a lengthy and comprehensive story is incredible. With such a busy script, however, certain specifics, which Elena Ferrante is renowned for detailing in the novels, fall short.
For instance, the mother-daughter relationship, in particular, the urgency for Lenu to not be like her mother; the socialist movement, which falls solely to the character of Nino and then later the revolutionised couple Pasquale Peluso and Nadia Galiani; and finally the inherent drug problem in the city. Specifically the scene where Lila’s son, Genaro, and his heroin addiction culminates in a vicious power battle between the new money – Lila and her computer company, and the old money, the Solara family and their links to the Camorra, one of Italy’s largest and oldest crime networks. I am curious to know how the play communicates to the unbeknownst audience who have not read the book, and whether the gritty, stultifying and divided reality of Naples is palpable.
My Brilliant Friend at the National Theatre. Image: Marc Brenner
Mirroring the theatricality that spills from Elena Ferrante’s books, the script is playful in tone and fiery in drama. Even parts of solemnity and violence are replicated with the use of puppetry, synonymous with comical nature but artistically twisted to demonstrate the odd tragedy of it all. The set design is ingenious, with a set of four moveable staircases, which intertwine to provide both a sense of entrapment at points and also space and volume at others. The backdrops are visually arresting, with the crashing waves on the island is Ischia and the scriptures and computer codes projections evoking an overwhelming sense of complex and frustrating perplexity.
Further to this, the music that opens each scene establishes a new flavour to the story that I highly appreciated. Each period is clearly defined, and with it, the cultural attitude of society set. The novels are further coloured by sensory elements like the gentle scents that are blown throughout the auditorium, for instance, the cigarette and bonfire smoke. As a fan of the novels, I valued this developed sense of form and shape to the linear story I had traced in my mind. The depiction of Naples is so visceral you succumb to it.
Melly Still’s direction of the Elena Ferrante novels on stage combined with Cusack and McCormack’s powerfully convincing performances as both 12-year olds and adults encapsulates the atmosphere and events of the novels excellently. Creditable for both Elena Ferrante fans as well as those who have never heard of the Neapolitan Novels before. Not only did the performance summon a newfound appreciation for Elena Ferrante, her writings, and her ability to encapture femininity’s trappings and the enduring strive for equality that is still persistent today, but it has also reignited my curiosity in Elena Ferrante.
Since watching the play, I have watched the Ferrante Fever documentary, and read up on a few speculative articles, which together left me with even more questions… Is Elena Ferrante, in fact, Lenu and this is her autobiography? Is Elena Ferrante even a woman? Do the Neapolitan Novels have any glimmer of a happy ending woven within them? As Elena Ferrante told Deborah Orr in 2016, “I believe all of us, of whatever age, are still in the thick of the battle. The conflict will be long, and even if we think we have left behind the culture and language of patriarchal society once and for all, we just have to look at the world in its entirety to understand that the conflict is far from over and that everything we have gained can still be lost.”
by Lily Rimmer
My Brilliant Friend is showing at the National Theatre, London, until February 22