Un Giorno in Ospedale

About the play

Written and first performed in Rome in 1955, Bene mio e core mio was a bold decision taken by Eduardo De Filippo in reaffirming the serious social content of his theatre. The inspiration for this new play came from his 1945 work for the stage, Napoli milionaria! (made even more accessible and popular by its film version directed by Eduardo himself). It was a work that condemned the Fascist regime, the War and its aftermath with the added negative effects on Italian life and especially family values as a consequence of American occupation.

A disenchanted De Filippo saw this negative trend gaining new strength in the 1950s as the so-called “Economic Miracle” began to take a toll on individual and social values that had withstood even the blows of a dictatorship and a disastrous war. Family ties and social interactions alike seem to waver and buckle under the stains of a new aspiring and grasping Italian petit bourgeoisie exacerbated by an unprecedented consumer driven desire for luxury goods and the social status that went with their affordability.

The question of domestic harmony will always be with us. Blood ties, as between Lorenzo Savastano and Chiarina, his spinster-sister and family relationships created through marriage as in this case cunningly contrived by the humble but resourceful greengrocer Filuccio, who manages to seduce and then marry Chiarina, albeit for his own economic gain, are exploited as a front behind which individual egoism, social and personal obsessions, self-serving ploys and outright deception reveal to the public the real face behind the charactera’s social mask or persona. Brother, sister, new husband and his devious uncle Gaetano, are constantly scheming to exploit for their own selfish gain any chance they get to empower and enrich themselves even at the expense of their “nearest and dearest”, as the title ironically suggests.