Closed For The Holiday - In Scena! Italian Theater Festival NY - May 6th 2026 - Casa Italiana Zerilli-Marimò, NYU
A mind “closed for the holiday” should probably be quiet. In Matteo Porru’s Closed for the Holiday, it is anything but. Instead, the audience is thrown into a fast moving stream of characters, unfinished thoughts, absurd conversations, and emotional detours as Porru explores the chaos of creativity through a whirlwind solo performance.
Performed in Italian with English supertitles, the show constantly jumps between comedy and melancholy. One moment Porru is delivering sharp, exaggerated comic monologues like the hilarious “Office for the Complication of Simple Affairs” sequence, and the next he shifts into something far more emotional and reflective. That office scene was easily one of our favorite parts of the show, brilliantly escalating increasingly ridiculous problems through deadpan bureaucratic logic. The writing there felt especially sharp and playful, and Porru’s comic timing made the entire sequence land extremely well.
Porru brings huge energy to the stage throughout the performance and demonstrates a strong ability to embody multiple characters of different ages, genders, and personalities. Through changes in voice, posture, rhythm, and expression, each character felt distinct and believable, even with the production moving at such a fast pace. His comic timing remained consistently solid throughout, especially during the more absurd or chaotic sections of the show.
The English supertitles generally helped non-Italian speaking audiences stay connected to the performance, but there were several moments where they struggled to keep pace with the speed of the dialogue. As non-Italian speakers, this occasionally made it a little tricky to fully follow exchanges or catch every joke in real time. Still, the energy of the performance and Porru’s physical storytelling meant that these issues never spoiled the overall experience too heavily.
Not every section lands equally, and the fragmented structure can occasionally feel overwhelming, but the inventiveness of the writing and Porru’s theatrical presence make the experience consistently interesting. Closed for the Holiday captures the strange messiness of creativity in a way that feels funny, human, and sometimes moving.