Director Lello Serao reinterprets Eduardo De Filippo’s masterpiece with an unconventional production in which a single actor interacts with seven puppets manipulated in full view. The show recounts the story of the Cupiello family, offering a glimpse into the collective imagination and memory of the audience.

A dream brought to life through puppetry, in which actor Luca Saccoia immerses himself and re-emerges as ‘Tommasino’, after uttering the fateful ‘yes’ to his father. From that moment, he relives and brings to life the ‘Christmas’ that has been entertaining audiences for over ninety years. He thus becomes the personal interpreter of a tradition, a witness to a ritual that traverses comic and tragic family memories, marking his own history and that of those watching the performance.
To give form and continuity to this ritual, he draws on the puppets and figures that come to life in his dreams and nightmares, resurfacing every year like the nativity scene and its shepherds. In this continuous return, he allows himself to be surprised once more by the stories that emerge, takes part in them, recites their lines and renews the dream of Eduardo and his “Luca Cupiello”: that of smoothing over conflicts through the ritual of the nativity scene.
“The nativity scene,” reads the director’s notes, “is the backdrop against which the entire play unfolds, both literally and metaphorically. It is the element Luca Cupiello needs to hope for a renewed, conflict-free humanity, but also the representation of birth and death. It is the time of transition from the old to the new, the blend of past and present, an established iconography and, at the same time, one to be continually deconstructed. The nativity scene is renewed every year; it is cyclical like the seasons; one may like it or not.”