Like Pantaleo Annese’s Pulcinella sulla Luna and Irene Vecchia’s La Luna e Pulcinella, the play was performed in 2019 during the 36th Festival La Macchine dei sogni, organised in Palermo by Mimmo Cuticchio. The theme for this edition was “L’altra faccia della Luna” (The other side of the Moon).

Using the classical motif of the topsy-turvy world (in which ewes bite dogs, men brag about being cheated on by their wives, and the categories of old and young, ugly and beautiful are switched), the author also revisits key moments from traditional Pulcinella show (a fight with a dog, a fight with Death). He combines several sources: the 1835 “Great Moon Hoax” (a prank published in the New York Sun about people on the Moon having been spotted with a telescope), the Apollo 11 mission launched by NASA in 1969, and Dolly the cloned sheep (1997).

Convinced that there are people on the Moon, Pulcinella wonders where they are hiding. The Moon invites him to go to her on a funicular ship. He meets the lunatic Beniamino, who explains that everyone is terrorised and has been hiding since the American astronaut came. This astronaut claims that the Moon belongs to him, and he wants to kill Pulcinella. But Pulcinella sends him back to earth with a blow of a stick. Beniamino asks Pulcinella to look after a dead grandfather, who turns out to be a very beautiful baby. Death convinces Pulcinella to be his baby and sings him lullabies so that he falls asleep, but Pulcinella wakes up and fights Him. A monstrous dog plays with Pulcinella, but he is frightened when the cloned ewe Dolly bites him. Pulcinella kills Dolly and, as a reward, Beniamino offers him his wife Carlotta. Pulcinella chooses instead to marry their daughter Teresina, and he goes back to earth with her.