Review: Scaleno at Studio Beyond ****

What if surviving is not the same as living? What if escape becomes a form of identity?

These are just two of the questions posed in Antonella Fittipaldi’s intriguing and at times bleakly comic one-woman, tri-lingual show playing at Studio Beyond as part of this year’s Liverpool Fringe Festival.

Described as ‘part autobiographical confession, part psychological battleground’, Scaleno considers themes like heritage, class, expectations and judgement, emotional and psychological trauma, abuse and vulnerability, belonging, desire and the key question of 'what is normal?'

The title is Italian for, you won’t be surprised to learn, scalene, meaning uneven or crooked and as in scalene triangle where all three sides are of differing lengths.

Here we have one woman but three competing/interacting voices.

The first is one of wry and probing self-reflection, in Italian, the second, more chaotic and unpredicatable, comes in sudden blistering bursts which I assume are roared out in her native Neapolitan dialect. And the third is a detached, monotonous-toned AI recitative in English which acts to probe, challenge or confirm.

Fittipaldi’s protagonist describes them as her ‘internal democracy’.

Later, in the wake of reflection on the constant search for meaning and her attempts to feel alive in the now, she muses: “Maybe I’m not crazy, just badly translated.”

Above and top: Antonella Fittipaldi in Scaleno which is playing at Studio Beyond as part of the Liverpool Fringe Festival.

Fittipaldi performs her disquieting work with energy, intensity, humour and conviction.

And while it’s centred on competing voices it is also an unexpectedly physical piece. There are time-out moments in noise cancelling headphones – the noise being her relentless internal monologue – where she lets music take over, while the narrative is also accompanied by lunging stretches and some writhing on the floor.

Although you certainly get a sense of the narrative and the raw emotions at play, unless you’re a native Italian speaker you’ll need the surtitled translations which flash up briefly on the backcloth.

Fittipaldi comes to Liverpool after performing Scaleno at the Camden Fringe and has admitted that presenting her one-woman show here is a conscious decision, driven by a sense of kinship; the similar humour, physicality and what she describes as ‘local identity lived through language’ shared by Liverpool and Naples.

Of course she’s not the first to note this. Back in 2008, one of many Capital of Culture projects was Cities on the Edge which linked historic maritime ports like Liverpool, Naples, Marseilles, Istanbul, Gdansk and Bremen which were all renown for their independent and rebellious spirit and distinct cultural attitudes and ecology.

Here in the Liverpool of 2026, along with Scaleno, a word of praise too for Studio Beyond, the warm, friendly and well-appointed independent arts venue in Wood Street which has acted as the main base for this year’s Liverpool Fringe Festival.

The city has had, and lost, several of these small theatrical spaces even in the two decades I’ve lived here (Liverpool Actors Studio Theatre and the Lantern Theatre immediately spring to mind), and they deserve to be cherished and supported in these challenging times.

Scaleno runs until tomorrow which is the final day of the fringe festival.