(1988-1994)

This is the only play written by Pier Vittorio Tondelli, even though an interest in theatre was always present in his activities. As is evident in his “juvenile” theatre production of “The Little Prince”, staged in the Seventies ; of which the writer had wanted to do a reworking but never did.

His theatrical side also emerged in a joint project with “Corriere della Sera” that Tondelli had designed as such, ” … a series of five interviews, conducted in the style of theatrical dialogue, with personalities from the worlds of show business, fashion and art. Recreating, on the page, all the nuances of speech through a radical stylistic effort. Interviews that are absolutely new and ‘written’, and that would have the narrative pleasantness of a play”. The project was not completed in its entirety. The only two interviews prepared were those with Magazzini and Carlo Maria Mariani, which are now in “Un weekend postmoderno” [A Post-modern Weekend].

Tondelli wrote several drafts of the two-act play that was initially entitled “La notte della vittoria (Dinner Party)” [Victory Night (Dinner Party)]. This was the version sent to the 38th edition of the Riccione-Ater Theatre Prize in 1985. The play received the special Paolo Bignami Memorial Prize with the following comments, “A work that – with its apparently traditional framework of a bourgeois environment – expresses, in dry and ironic dialogue, the moods and restlessness of the Eighties generation ; and marks the entrance into theatre of an up-and-coming narrator”.

This is what the author said about it, “Substantially, it is a ‘bourgeois play’ of conversation in which a group of characters get together for dinner on the evening of 11 July 1982, when Italy won the World Championship in Spain. Along with the echoes of the match there is another game being played on the terrace of the Oldofredi house ; a cruel yet entertaining game of coups de théâtre, betrayals, revelations and ambiguity”.

In subsequent versions, the writer used only the shorter title “Dinner Party”. Some principal situations were also modified, the football match for example.

The script was published by Bompiani in 1994, in an edition edited by Fulvio Panzeri, and staged under the direction of Piero Maccarinelli in Reggio Emilia that same year.