Hide and Seek at Park Theatre. Photo credit Mariano Gobbi.Under the stewardship of director Carlotta Brentan (who also provides the English translation) two young Italians discover a forbidden mutual longing under extreme circumstances. Gio (Louis Scarpa) has rejected the world which mocks and degrades him and has absconded to a makeshift subterranean squat, hidden somewhere in the woods near his village. As concerns grow for his safety, Mirko (Nico Cetrulo) a school classmate on the hunt for him, discovers his secret underground hide-away and soon begins to learn the motives for Gio’s deception, becoming complicit in it by bringing him supplies and giving obfuscating interviews to the media.
As a naive juvenile romance develops, what starts as an interesting exploration of Gio’s refusal to conform to the demands of social media popularity, quickly morphs into a critique on the weakness of others and the fear-induced lengths to which they will go to hide their own sexuality.
Whilst the tragic outcome proved rather too predictable for a play set in an Italian backwater, it does succeed in presenting the first, unworldly and tentative explorations of two gay lads who feel the enormous peer pressure to maintain popularity as the strongest defence against unwanted scrutiny and the cruelty which results from being discovered as other. For that, it is to be commended.
