Customer Reviews

Emergency Exit

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Emergency Exit by Manlio Santanelli is a rewarding read, both for it's metaphoric value as well as for its literary style.

I must confess that I am not fond of reading plays. While a work of prose allows your mind to spontaneously create its own images, a play does not. One must first create a mental image of a stage, then create the appropriate scenery, props, and the like. Then one must scrupulously follow what character is speaking, mentally attribute the corresponding voice and follow each character's entrances and exits so as not to have the wrong character on the stage at any given time. There is the whole business of delivery . . . how a written line is to be spoken; what emotion, how intense and so on.

Emergency Exit eliminates most of these problems. First, there are only two characters, Angelo and Martino. The setting is the interior of an abandoned dwelling in Naples. Santanelli is highly directive, providing copious directions for the characters - something that actors and directors may find confining, but removes much of the guess work for the reader. So, from the reader's stand point, it is direct, to the point and unambiguous.

But the real value is its content. Emergency Exit is a metaphor for life. Two characters, one of high birth and the other a commoner, represent the Everyman in each of us. They find themselves sharing quarters in a district of Naples which is largely deserted due to earthquake damage. The threat of another quake looms ever in the background. Angelo's and Martino's arguments and bickering vacillates from the trivial to the profound, but always has the texture of reality. Effusive with existential despair, it never wallows - you are constantly motivated to turn the next page.

Thanks to Anthony Molino and Jane House's brilliant translation,Manlio Santanelli's play Emergency Exit has been made accessible to English speaking readers.Hailed in Italy as a masterpiece,Santanelli explores the physical and psychological condition of two Becket-like characters in a modern urban setting.Simultaneously witty,probing and disturbingthis translation demands to be read. Better still,it demands to be produced.