" No Special Lighting effects,
No Special Sound effects or Smoke:
They are Not Needed.
The Two Actors,
With their Sole Acting Art,
Manage to Catalyze Attention
From the Opening Tones to the Spectacular Conclusion."
A Jewel of Contemporary Dramaturgy "Matthew19:14"
Masterfully written, with a rhythm capable of constantly keeping the audience's attention and even with a duration skilfully dosed to fully unravel the plot [...] and leave the spectator with hints of reflections with profound ethical and moral implications.
As for the performance by Coltorti and Rizzo (also director and producer),
it is simply impeccable, intense, exciting and engaging, full of chemistry and mutual synergy, and makes full credit to a show that we hope to see soon in even more important and prestigious theatres ."
Fabrizio Corgnati
Matthew 19:14 manages to keep the viewer with bated breath for an hour
"Matthew 19:14" is one of the hidden theatrical gems this year
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Matthew 19:14 is a tightly woven script by author Lorenzo Gioielli and, after success in Italy, the play is now is being performed for the first time in English at the Fringe.
This is a two person play starring Elisabetta Jane Rizzo and Francesco Martino that starts with the premise of a missed appointment and a chance encounter with a stranger.
What unfolds is a dark story of emotional suffering and possible choices have to be made that would be unacceptable to any sane person in normal circumstances. How far would you go to save a loved one – a child, a partner?
Both Elisabetta Jane Rizzo and Francesco Martino are outstandingly believable in their respective roles that take us on a well scripted work with many sharp twisting turns that along the way raise some difficult to face ethical dilemmas.
Matthew 19:14 is one of the hidden theatrical gems hiding away in venues across the city this year, and it honestly deserves a far wider audience than it seems to be getting at The Fringe as it could easily play in any professional theatre it wanted to given the chance, and I hope some booking agents do pick up on this work".
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Tom King
"A tense, delicate two-hander...
Gioielli genuflects to the greatest Italian dramatist, Pirandello, through clever and escalating uncertainty about who these characters are and what they may be in search of"
Mark Lawson
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"Two Actors of Undoubted Talent,
Who without any great stage effects manage to hold
The audience in their grip for almost an hour,
Entrusting to their Acting Art alone the crescendo of Tension."
Arianna De Simone
"A Pulp Dialogue Between the Two Characters that Touch in an hour all the Hidden and Deepest Folds of the Human Soul"
[..] Jesus Emiliano Coltorti is perfect in his role of an insurance agent
on his half day off from work. A man that, as he told, believes in caos
and believes that the contrary of the word compassion is still someway
the word compassion.
Elisabetta Jane Rizzo, who is also the director, performs his female counterpart: a tense, neurotic, extremely convincing mother, who believes that desperation, on the contrary of pain, has no end, and she is forced to the “extrema ratio” (last resort) she can imagine for the love of her child.
And so it blossoms an intimate but cruel, blunt and yet erotic, explicit
as well as slightly perverse theater. […]
The scene hinges on an intense synergy of the couple, realized in the physical distances at the end of the stage as much as the intimacy that grows until a passionate body contact.
So much of the expressiveness of the actors you can enjoy in the long silences that both of them spend listening to each other. And the body stillness forcefully brings the attention on the whispers, on the faces,
and on the eyes full of tears that Rizzo is not afraid to let flow.
The plot and the meaningful intensity of the work, of which the author is Lorenzo Gioielli, are impeccable. The continuous impalpable game of seducement and the apparent, almost electric calm, yet allow important ethical and moral questions to raise, without impeding the tension
to grow minute by minute though, until the final liberating outburst,
with Tarantinian traits. […]
Therefore a totally recommended work, with the accuracy of its plot and direction, as well as the excellent actor’s chemistry of the two main characthers, that certainly deserves other spaces and further occasions
to be shared with a greater audience.
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Maurilio Di Stefano - Il Foyer
"A Jewel of Contemporary Drama"
Fabrizio Corgnati
"A certainly thrilling, moving performance
by the actor Emiliano Coltorti
and Elisabetta Jane Rizzo"
Jesus Emiliano Coltorti and Elisabetta Jane Rizzo keep the audience glued to the chairs during their performance of “Matthew 19:14”: a classic theatre play written by Lorenzo Gioielli.
Under the direction of Rizzo, the two actors take the audience by hand and captivate and
totally involved them in the story,
until the final twist. […]
What are we willing to do, to save the life of a loved one? This is the question which pervade the audience, until the last scene, where the qualities of the actors overwhelmingly stand out.
An important, direct and essential script. Talented actors.
Beautiful the ending in “Charlie’s Angels” style.
Engaging and enchanting.
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Marcello Valeri
“Matthew 19:14”, written by Lorenzo Gioielli
and winner of the “Gran giallo”(best thriller)award in 2004, sparks reflections and thoughts, moves consciousness, and arouses debates at the end
of the show.
Without giving solutions, but actually being able
to give motivations embraceable by both
characters’point of views, the play is a 45 minutes dialogue of flooring truths and confessions.
Among common courtesies between strangers and considerations on theory of Chaos and butterfly effect, which says that a beat of a butterfly wings in Tokyo can cause a hurricane on the other side of the world, you can find tenderness, desperation,and newspaper themes extremely hard and difficult to deal with. […]
The play has frequent changes of rhythm and a drama increasing tension, until the final turns of the events and twist that turn everything upside down, and the audience partecipe powerless yet captivated.
Reviling the plot would be a mistake: the game of the storylines and revelations will be disclosed only at the end, in a continuous reversal and turning upside down, where the characters will have to realize how far to go to achieve their aim […]
And the performances of the two actors explode.
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M. Staderini
"Excellent performance of the actors
Jesus Emiliano Coltorti and
Elisabetta Jane Rizzo,
thoroughly intimately inside this story,
and extremely connected to each other,
with a really enviable listening."
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F. Sammartino