“Solo” the well deserved succes of Arturo Brachetti

Arturo Brachetti’s show at the Teatro Verdi in Pisa is well-deservedly sold out. It is called “Solo” the latest amazing, phantasmagorical show by Arturo “thousand-faces” Brachetti. We should say eh is “going solo, but not alone” because for this show the artist is surrounded by a magical stage, just as transformative as him, led by skilled technicians, operators and video operators.

“Solo” begins with a framework of history gathered around a house, in which every room is a dream, a project, a movie: and so the small miniature house is traversed and investigated by a camera operator revealing moments, family memories and great personalities in the history of cinema and magic with which Brachetti dialogues, thanks not only to his ability to disguise himself at an impressive speed, but also video technology enriched with animations and video-mapping. In this palace of memory, also home to the myths, dreams, fairy tales and childhood games, he becomes Houdini, a popstar, a Hollywood icon and even stages a wedding banquet where he is simultaneously the cook, the maid and the unfaithful newlywed.

The show is such a whirlwind that it seems to pass from one film to another. Many critics have linked his unique artistic figure to that of Leopoldo Fregoli, the magician that pioneered quickchange in the twenties, who, not unlike Arturo himself, was an avid fan of cinema to the point of shooting short films with an apparatus given to him by the Lumiére brothers. An artist from which Brachetti drew many inspirations for his numbers of attraction. But the real amazement is to find in Arturo a poet of the stage, one using his hands to craft a very delicate piece of shadow puppetry or to tell a story only with a tablet covered in sand that he skillfully and gracefully molds, leaving the audience breathless. We can not but praise the show in its entirety, including the state-of-the art technology: laser shows and video-mapping, where cardboard boxes become the colorful scenarios for a thousand stories, morphing at the artist’s beck and call. And what about Arturo’s dance with the dress, moved invisibly by a tiny drone placed inside it? The technology in this totally renewed show is the new face of magic and does not replace the actor, but is an integral part of his enjoyable metamorphosis. His brilliant director makes it a perfect show.