Language is our prison, but it is also the only way out.

Do the snail and the turtle belong to the same species? From this seemingly trivial question, He and She spark a fierce dispute, transforming an insignificant detail into the ground for a tragicomic clash. But the real point is not to find an answer: the conflict itself is their nourishment. He and She cannot exist without their mutual contempt, which becomes fuel for their stagnant relationship. They expose each other, but never truly decide, prisoners of their irresponsibility and incapable of genuine communication.

Meanwhile, the world around them collapses. War rages outside their dwelling, but the two remain enclosed in a shell of indifference, blocking out everything around them with a mix of obtuseness and self-referentiality. The turtle becomes an unexploded mine: an impending threat they pay no attention to. And if the snail’s shell is a refuge, it also becomes a prison: the symbol of denial, of fleeing from ethical and civil responsibility.

Written in 1962, Delirio a due by Eugène Ionesco is a small masterpiece of the Theatre of the Absurd, in which language, instead of uniting, divides. Does the question depend on the answer or the answer on the question? Here, every attempt at dialogue turns into an insinuation, a subtle accusation that feeds the vicious circle of their existence. He and She do not argue to reach a conclusion, but for the sheer pleasure of conflict. Their love does not exist except in the need to clash: without that ongoing game of slaughter, they would dissolve.

Corrado Nuzzo and Maria Di Biase bring this verbal dance to life with extraordinary naturalness, highlighting every nuance of the absurd. Giorgio Gallione’s direction respects the text’s philological crescendo, allowing the nonsense to merge with a bitter truth. The set design by Nicolas Bovey, with a progressively deforming bourgeois room, makes the psychological collapse of the couple visible.

The initial bickering quickly expands, touching on more personal themes: their relationship, the incompatibilities that divide them (never a moment when they feel hot or cold at the same time), the resentments accumulated over time (She accuses Him of seducing her and pushing her to abandon a devoted husband). All this happens with complete indifference to the war raging outside their dwelling: shootings, deportations, explosions do not affect their bubble of alienation. It no longer matters whether they are sheltered in a turtle or snail shell: the real goal is to remain estranged from the surrounding violence.

Ionesco, marked by the experience of the world wars, pours into Delirio a due all his terror of conflicts and his disenchantment with extreme individualism. Written during the Cold War, when the threat of a global catastrophe loomed over everyone, the text seems more relevant than ever today. As emphasized by Nuzzo and Di Biase themselves, this play represents a precious opportunity for reflection, especially for younger generations, on how little the world has changed and how, despite everything, mankind continues to live immersed in its small, petty obsessions, ignoring the tragedy unfolding around it.

Delirio a due is a perfect example of Ionesco’s cutting and disarming comedy. A work that plays with the apparent lightness of farce to lay bare human irrationality, highlighting how language, instead of uniting, often becomes an insurmountable obstacle. In this dynamic, He and She reveal themselves as grotesque puppets, trapped in a sterile and repetitive routine, where the argument is never truly about content, but about the very act of fighting.

But the real tragedy is not their quarrel: it is the indifference towards the outside. At this point, no one will notice. Neighbors slaughtered? An army at the gates? Decapitated heads falling from the ceiling? None of this touches their pettiness. The only concern will be to throw those remains out the window, thus perpetuating the mechanism of denial.

It doesn’t matter: their debate takes absolute priority. The war is nothing more than the guillotine of responsibility, a distant shadow compared to the only real drama, their inability to truly see each other.

The only element of disturbance: the audience, which reacts with a dissonant, almost paradoxical hilarity, as if the tragic absurdity of the text dissolves into an unexpected amusement, revealing a contrast that’s difficult to decipher, but that’s another issue...

But in the end, who is right? Those who won? Those who lost? Perhaps logic no longer matters. Perhaps, as Ionesco suggested, true wonder does not lie in finding answers, but in keeping the question open.

We have forgotten our solitude, and with it, we have also forgotten our humanity.

From February 20 to March 2, 2025 (9:00 PM, Sunday 23 and 2 at 5:30 PM, Wednesday 26 at 5:00 PM)

TEATRO VITTORIA - ACTORS & TECHNICI, Piazza S. Maria Liberatrice 10, Rome (Testaccio)

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Tickets (including presale):

• Full price: Orchestra €30, Gallery €24

• Discounted (under 35/over 65/cral): Orchestra €23, Gallery €20

• Discounted under 18: Orchestra €15, Gallery €13