By Elise C. Barnett-Curran
Well. … expletive.
I don’t normally like dramas, and The Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival’s Safe is a Drama—capital D. Dramas can be maudlin and melodramatic and often persist in slapping you in the face with themeand metaphor. I like dramas like Angels in America and Hamlet because the characters are real because they’re funny. They’re really funny and biting and honest and they’re my friends. I like dramas like Babette’s Feast because the simple kindness of sacrificing one’s own happiness for others is the most simple and gentle and powerful thing a human can do.
This show leans more toward that ilk. Safe by FMG tells the story of a nun trapped in isolation during the pandemic. She is alone. She is terrified. She is Italian. And, uh. Well, geez. Let’s just say I’m trying not to completely lose it as I type these words. We’re all in this together, and this was maybe the most powerful example of this notion I’ve seen thus far.
FMG—for eponymous writer and director Federico Maria Giansanti—is an Italian theater company that has joined our humble little festival in Salt Lake and I am so grateful that they did. At the heart of Safe are themes like racism, faith, a sense of community, and volcanic trauma, something we are all facing at this astronomical moment in time. The people of Italy have suffered enormously at the hands of this global crisis, and this small bubble of a story is a powder keg of precisely what rests at the heart of the world and what so many people have banded together to try to communicate: there is a worm at the heart of the tower. That is why it will not stand.
Valeria Wandja is explosive in her role as Sister Daisy, the isolated nun and lone performer onstage. Her moments of desperation are not overarching but achingly human, the words of the script pouring through her as naturally as some of the same thoughts all of us have thought in the past few months. “Stay home, stay safe. Stay home, stay safe.” Her brittleness is met with fire and her vulnerability met with mettle of iron. In the end, she sweeps the floor, a gesture of normalcy so plain and honest and unassuming that I felt exposed in it, just one among billions that aches for the average and everyday and all at once feels that is the only thing we have to cling to.
According to their company biography (translated from Italian, so bear with me), FMG was born with the aim of creating new and stimulating collaborations in theater, television, and music fields. They believe it right that theater companies should not have to worry about the complicated organization of an event but … bring a high artistic quality to the stage.
They are certainly welcome in Salt Lake, and I hope to see more of them again.
Safe Facebook Event
FMG Produzione Facebook Page
The Great Salt Lake Fringe Festival Facebook Page
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