When faced with the inexplicable, when every system of meaning falters, what do we choose to believe? Adapted from playwright Fabrizio Sinisi’s first novel, Il Prodigio, directed by Giacomo Bisordi, it takes the form of a contemporary apocalypse – in its original sense of revelation – which runs through the text like a book of visions: a sequence of images, collapses and apparitions heralding the end of an order and the emergence of a new, as yet indecipherable world.

A face appears in the sky above a major Italian city. A face with rough, almost childlike features, as if sketched by an inexperienced hand. At first it is an anomaly, a phenomenon to be observed with curiosity. But the face does not vanish. It remains. It imposes itself. And soon it ceases to be an image to become a concrete and constant presence.
The community gathers around this apparition, in a feverish attempt to interpret it. Inexplicable events occur: healings, signs that defy all logic. The mystery deepens: is it a projection, a deception, or the manifestation of God?
At the centre of this upheaval of reality is Don Luca, a media-savvy priest, a public figure more accustomed to speaking of faith than practising it. Beside him is Marta, enigmatic and elusive, a living yet elusive presence, the object of a love that undermines all certainty. Unable to provide answers, Don Luca sees the last fragile balance of his own faith begin to crack, whilst Folker emerges onto the scene: a magnetic and charismatic prophet, capable of channelling the collective need to believe and guiding it towards a new, unsettling form of spirituality.