If you’ve ever loved someone, and hated them almost as much, then there is a play in Red Hook, Brooklyn that you need to see. Botte di Ferro lets you into a relationship that cycles relentlessly through euphoria and agony from adolescence to adulthood. Written by Ben Gassman, Botte di Ferro combines depth of emotion with precise and inventive direction from Tara Elliott.
Phone conversations, trips to the candy store, hospital visits, and study abroad escapades all bring us back to a Neapolitan pizzeria under the watchful gaze of Mount Vesuvius. The actors are completely vulnerable, wearing all of their emotions like tattoos.
The waiter (Alessandro Magania) and piazzola (Laura Caparrotti) guide the audience and the couple through an enchanted evening. Everything is a specialty of the house, including pizza, clams, and beautiful embellishments. They each give soliloquies that demand the eyes and ears of every audience member as they pour their hearts out in beautiful Italian. You don’t need to know what they’re saying. You can read it in their eyes and hear it in their voices.
She (Layla M. Khoushnoudi) needs just one scene to flash her “evil” wit, intoxicating affection, rage, and despair. Her capacity to inflict pain on Him is matched only by her willingness to suffer it again and again as the relationship hits its peaks and valleys. She knows exactly what she wants right now, but no one knows what she will want next.
He (Jess M. Barbagallo) doesn’t know what he wants. He can’t tell Her or the audience what’s going through his head. All he knows is he wants Her, no matter how fiercely they fight, or how many times he sabotages himself. The good moments are so good that it’s worth saying “Yes” to love now, knowing that tomorrow it could all unravel again.
The romance is too intense to handle for the entire production, so director Tara Elliott devised a brilliant way to give the audience periodic snippets of relief while keeping it hooked. The first comes thirty minutes into the play, when emotional fatigue starts to set in. Just when you think you can’t handle another beautiful disaster, the cast breaks into dance and lifts the audience out of heavy emotions and into carefree, creative bliss. For a few of these enchanted moments, you can breathe before being thrown back into the waves.
Botte di Ferro skips the shyness and pleasantness of the early stages of a relationship, giving the audience a heavy pour of real emotion. There is no like, no nice. There is love, hate, ecstasy, pain, truth, and lies. You will want to always never be in a dysfunctional relationship ever again for the rest of your life.