The great theater of Rome in Budapest, despite the defeat

In short, Milan is the cult of industriousness, Venice, wherever you look, is the place of poetic beauty, Florence too has its beautiful reason, but Rome, there’s nothing to do, it’s something more. Rome is definitely a way of being in the world. You discover it everywhere: observing people gesturing at the Laurentino metro terminus, or trying to catch a taxi in front of (or behind) the Palazzaccio or again, anywhere in Italy, addressing those with that accent a fateful “Forza Roma” , getting the same answer every time: “Always!”.

It has never happened to me during the descents in the capital to hear someone who is sguinsciato away from answering in this way: “Always!”, so much so that I sometimes wondered if inside the Gra there really was someone who supported Lazio. Be that as it may, this “Always!” it is the sediment, that is, what remains, of an actor’s line from some forgotten show. Because, let’s face it, Rome is a gigantic theater – comic or dramatic it doesn’t matter – and in Budapest this great ability leapt to the eye.

At one point the Puskas Arena seemed like a branch of the Ambra Jovinelli Theater, especially until the players and all the attachés have had enough oxygen in their brains to perform cackling, somersaulting, dance choreographies and even legerdemain and magic tricks. But don’t think that we are referring only to Roma players, not at all. The Sevillians, who don’t lack castanets and theater hits, caught the amusing inclination of the vaudeville match and didn’t have to be asked. At one point the degree of free uproar in the field was such, in the sense that each artist performed his or her favorite number with extreme freedom, that there would have been nothing to say if, as happened in the revue theaters in Piazza Guglielmo Pepe , on the Esquiline, even the public had teased the actors with the throwing of vegetables, poultry entrails and, in cases of greater enthusiasm, dead mice.

Of course, everything lasted until the issue became hot, the cramps dissuaded the great shots of dexterity and the match took on the inclination of the dramatic show, with an unfortunately disappointing outcome for the Roma supporters. However this does not matter at all, because Rome – meaning the city – and the Roman world emerged triumphant from the Puskas Arena, minimally affected by the defeat on the field.

Because the theatre, despite coming from Greece, has come of age in Rome and never as after this searing defeat on penalties, once the disappointment has passed, can we say all the more to the Hungarians, paraphrasing Corrado Guzzanti: “When Plautus staged ‘ The Miles Gloriosus’ you ran away from the last mammoths” and to the Sevillians: “In the end, we wrote you the whole show, you just participated”. Because, it is often forgotten, sport is about entertaining people, especially those who really like to have fun, and it won’t take long – a week or two – to meet two Roma fans on tram number three who giggle and say: “We lost in Budapest, but kill us if we enjoyed it”.