Roberto Benigni to Make U.S. Stage Debut in TuttoDante

Oscar-winning Italian actor-auteur Roberto Benigni is getting his act together and taking it to New York. Benigni’s one-man show, TuttoDante, will stop at the Hammerstein Ballroom on May 30, part of a seven-day North American tour that also includes San Francisco May 26, Boston June 6 and Chicago June 12.

TuttoDante Everything About Dante is Benigni’s conflation of Dante’s Divine Comedy, the early-14th-century epic poem in which the hero journeys through the Inferno, Purgatorio and Paradiso seeking salvation. The bulk of the show is in English, with bits of Italian woven in.

Benigni has been performing TuttoDante around his native Italy and across Europe since 2006. In the States, he’s best known for co-writing, directing and starring in the tender Holocaust drama La Vita È Bella Life Is Beautiful, for which he won the 1999 Best Actor Academy Award and delivered one of the most effusive, acrobatic climbing over chairs! acceptance speeches in Oscar history.