The stage play, officially titled “Collins Italian-English English-Italian Gem Dictionary on Broadway”, was due to be directed by Fede Álvarez and toured around the UK and Italy in the coming autumn. However, the stage adaptation of the 655 page list of words and lexemes was scrapped this week as Álvarez claimed that the script was “wholly unintelligible”.

“Well, first of all, there are over twenty six thousand different characters,” Álvarez told us this morning, “most of whom only say one word.

“For example, the character Fifth, who appears on page 463, only says the line ‘quinto’ before the next character Fifty speaks.

“There’s also very little in the way of stage direction; ‘enter’ is only used once in the script to introduce the character Entrare, whose only line several hundred pages later is ‘to come in, enter, go in.’

“If we were to use the well-tried metric of ‘one page of script equals one minute of performance’ the play would run for almost eleven hours. And that’s not including the one allotted intermission on page 502, just after the character Intermingle says ‘inframmischiar(si)’.

“The only scene of sustained monologue is around halfway through when the three characters Measures, Weights, and Money each deliver a soliloquy, with lines ranging from ‘un millimetro 1/1000 di metro – 0.03937 inch’ to ‘una tonnellata maritima – 2205 pounds avoirdupois.’

“The script is nonsensical and no sensible human being would want anything to do with it.” Netflix are seemingly interested in a limited series version.

Adam Berry