My Brilliant Friend. Part 1 & 2

Based on Elena Ferrante’s novels My Brilliant Friend and A Story of A New Name

It is a story of two girls, Lenu and Lila, who befriend each other amidst the poverty and destitution of the slums of Naples in the 1950s. Their interest in studying and competing at school; the rough settling of scores in the slums; discovering the world around them, and first relationships with boys bring those two very different girls together in a peculiar way. Over time, however, the worlds of the two young women drift apart: one of them stays in the environment she grew up in, while the other breaks free.

Elena Ferrante is one of the most outstanding authors of contemporary Italian literature. Her first volume of the Neapolitan novels was published in 2012, and over the following years she wrote three sequels to it. The tetralogy quickly became an international bestseller that was translated into many languages and has also inspired a TV series. The environment and characters portrayed in her novel mirror the problems of Italian society at the time and also the changes that slowly occurred in that isolated world. The production covers two first volumes.

Premiere on 8 February 2025 at the Small Building of the Vanemuine Theatre