Giorgio Gaber
Il Signor G

Who is Mr. G? Or rather, what can he be?

Mr. G is a character that, from birth, possesses a personality, a conscience, a pathos. Even though Mr. G is in swaddling clothes in the welcoming and disdainful hands of the onlookers in room no. 132, he is already grown. Mr. G has already lived, made his choices, whether right or wrong, scanned the bodies of those forced to live around him, capturing the relevant factors of characters and souls. He has also prophesied his own end.

He is born amidst a profusion of flowers, of complacent voices on his physical appearance, vain hypotheses of resemblance, and hypocritical compliments dispensed even by the most obscure relative, who only shows up on significant occasions, namely births, weddings, and funerals. G begins to walk the path of his growth that will lead him to confront what the world offers, wrapping himself voluntarily in a film of pessimism that will be his faithful companion until the day of his withering. He also begins to hypothesize about his own place in society. It's a heavy torment: which side to be on?

With a keen sense of measure, he tries to immerse himself in his optimal dimension or, as much as possible, in the one most congenial to him. It is not easy to detach from the fictitious interest of the patrons of his life. People who seem engaged in his future, interspersing parts of vodka to be poured into a cocktail among possible projects for the future. The human race circulating around him is not a good thing or what he expected to encounter. He tries to free himself from the clutches of success, the false kind, achieved by vile methods or without the development of his own faculties. Too bad then that he must give way, ironically blaming his piggish world, realizing with far too much clarity that it is a globe of plastic, colored by paper flowers and lousy people.

Even love is too tight for Mr. G, the kind that seems sweet and carefree during engagement but then turns into a burden of forced affection just over the threshold of marriage. Too much pessimism though, dear Mr. G. Not that you are wrong, for heaven's sake, but you're not right on all fronts.

Perhaps nature is the only lifeboat. He goes in search of happiness, relying on the variable moods of the seasons, hoping they will listen to him or show him the way to recover misused time. He tries to talk to a tree and realizes the futility of his life, a dimension he has now had enough of. In the most beautiful chapter of his existence, he leans against the edge of a river and while contemplating what could truly move him, the slow flow of water, he sees his life passing by and summing up, perhaps hastily, he attempts to commit suicide. Here, with effective nerve control and necessary optimism, his conscience comes to the forefront. That inner light that urges him to reflect, to analyze past mistakes that perhaps were not entirely harmful. G, after some hesitation, decides to postpone the ultimate plan indefinitely or to the darkest oblivion, consoling himself with what remains, the smiles of his children, or the curves of his wife.

In the end, Mr. G, convinced he has understood the meaning of life, returns to room no. 132 and decides to die at the same hour he saw the distorted smiles of family members printed on those faces he encountered as his vision materialized. And here, among the cold walls of the hospital, in a whirlwind that spans between grotesque and farcical, he leaves less than a handful of flies to his relatives on earth and takes pleasure in their reactions, enjoying, as at birth, capturing those peaks of hypocrisy that seep from the sentiments of those who remember him as a good person.

At the dawn of the sharpest decade in the modern history of our country, a brilliant Giorgio Gaber, with the collaboration of the equally talented Sandro Luporini, presents an innovative form of show, called "Teatro canzone", characterized by a string of songs and prose monologues that will nurture the stages of the major Italian theaters for thirty years to come. In the 1970-71 theater season, he would present his character, "Mr. G", with whom he would dialogue and share introspections and ideas, while in the following season, he would dedicate himself to describing "The Bourgeois". The record company Carosello in 2003 unified the sum of the two showcases into a single, beautiful album that marks the beginning of Gaber's extraordinary theatrical adventure. Work of, truly, rare beauty.