2023-04-28 00:52:02
Leo Bassi made us so “dizzy” that it was difficult to figure out how many characters he had during the development of this work (he even made us doubt if one of them was himself). of course Oh, Mussolini it’s a puzzling job, that as soon as one as a spectator is honest, he realizes that he “did not do what he wanted, because he was a fascist” (as he well added several times throughout the performance of this work); but actually, because he doesn’t owe anyone anything in any sense.
Therefore, to Oh, Mussolini It cannot be qualified from the parameters of “good” or “bad” work. I prefer to point out that it was born from the impulse of this professional to demonstrate that what “Those who do not know history will be doomed to repeat it”They are not empty words or too “vulgarized”; put it in dialogue with its total autonomy. This combination led to the fact that whoever has gone to “have a laugh” will have had it; At the same time, you will have been left with a somewhat bittersweet taste in your mouth. Likewise, whoever has struggled to find “failures” in things in this work that respond to its dramaturgy, or to the “artistic virtuosity” with which each of the actions at stake is expected to be carried out, assured them that they will have been satisfied. with the idea that “once again he knew how to read the work”.
The profiles that I have drawn for you are only two of the possible ones that we will have interpreted, those that we have integrated into the public. Perhaps there are those who maintain that this is a symptom of the “inconsistencies” of Oh, Mussolini. Even so, I believe that if one has the will to take advantage of this work, he will take it. Given that Leo Bassi offered us a wide repertoire of reflections and guidelines on a very topical topic, being that what concerns history is not only “things that belong to the past”; but also, there are those that help to decipher what were the material conditions that gave rise to what happened.
Leo Bassi Oh, Mussolini he dedicated himself to showing the dangerous consequences of acting as if fascism were limited to being a thing of “secular messianisms”. Since the subjects who carried out and led it in the first half of the 20th century, were “useful allies” to contain a possible expansion of communism. For such a company, Leo Bassi went from the grotesque to the insubmissive, but always preserving lucidity. This denoted that what he was really doing with us, the viewers, is playing with our minds and heating us up for the next scene.
That is why this piece shied away from adopting a linear and narrative structure, beginning because the first thing that was entrusted was that we, the spectators, get rid of our “defense mechanisms”, preventing us from clinging to a kind of “confirmation bias”. Meanwhile, Leo Bassi told us about different historical milestones that, in one way or another, refuted the “pacifying and democratic” vocation of the United States when the Spanish Civil War broke out after the coup d’état by the side of the insurgents, or what to say of the invasions or attacks on the corresponding sovereignties of France, Great Britain and many other countries by the so-called “Axis Powers”. The case is that it reminded us that what marked a before and after for the United States to enter World War II was the attack on the port of Pearl Harbor (United States) by the Japanese army, and the rest, let’s say , “it was good for him” to justify himself on the following dates about his actions on the international scene.
We must recognize that the historical events that we have erected as “turning points” are important. In any case, Leo Bassi had the wisdom and insight to stop in the context of what he was exposing to us. That is to say: in what he allows us constitute an ontology of the present, in order to make sure that everything that has happened has unfolded within a framework in which innumerable possibilities were germinating. That is why what is underlined in the sources we consulted is due to the fact that they are heirs to a very specific reading of history. A reading that is projected into the future, influencing our present, to win “the battle for the story”, the “cultural war”…, which are precisely contests with which to channel upcoming events towards a certain direction and version.
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