Last night, a friend of mine and I went to see a play called The Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo. It was brilliant! We both suspected it would be good, but I can’t remember laughing harder at anything in a long time, including The Life of Brian. (I know. I can hear the cries of “Blasphemy!” now, but at least I didn’t say “Jehovah”.) It turns out Mr. Fo won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1997, which led one Italian paper to say “Even in the Nobel . . . mistakes happen.” If the rest of his stuff is as good as what we saw, I’d say that wasn’t a mistake.
So, has anyone else heard of this fellow or seen other things by him? The play was very satirical and farcial, but that was what made it so funny; that and the fact that it was based on a true story of an anarchist who somehow managed to fall from a 5th floor window in a police station while being interrogated. The death was ruled an accident.
There’s one other thing I have to share with you from the program notes. When one of his plays, Mistero Buffo, was broadcast on Italian television in 1977, the Vatican’s newspaper called it “the most blasphemous program ever broadcast in the history of world television.” Fo thanked them for saying the kindest thing anyone had ever said about him.
As an undergrad, I had a small part in a one-act adaptation of Dario Fo’s We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! A screamingly funny farce about a couple of Italian housewives who come home with a bag full of stolen groceries after a riot at the local supermarket. In hiding the “loot” from Maria’s way-too-honest husband, Giuseppi, they stuff the bag inside Margarita’s coat. This leads to some very bizarre complications when Giuseppi notices and assumes that Margarita is pregnant.
That’s the only piece by Dario Fo that I’m familiar with, but if his other writings are just as good, I really should read more.
That sounds like him. Apparently it’s just you and me, pal, which in this place is amazing.
Fellow Dopers, I implore you. The man won a Nobel Prize for satire! If you want to bust a gut laughing and you get a chance to see something by this guy, take it. If nothing else, I want someone else around here to understand why the line “If you see a man in a powder blue turtleneck, duck,” is funny. We’re talking carefully placed logic bombs you just know are going to go off in the characters being mocked’s faces (as in accounting for why a window just happened to be conveniently open at midnight on a December night when the temperature was well below freezing), physical comedy worthy of The Three Stooges, and a musical interlude which managed to segue from The Internationale to Stop Children What’s That Sound to I Can’t Get No Satisfaction sung in harmony while doing that physical comedy I mentioned. And that was just the ending of the first act.
Dario Fo’s history and political attitudes are not as pleasant as his plays, some would say.
*‘Morte accidentale di un anarchico’ * was written after the policeman that was unjustly accused of murdering the anarchist was shot and killed by a group of left-wing extremists. So Dario Fo’s play is seen by many as biased, unfair and an insult to the policeman’s family.
He is also considered by others to be stubborn, self-centered, self-righteous and an extremist. Basically not everyone likes him here in Italy.
That of course is a description of him as a person. I cannot comment on his plays, I’ve never seen them. There’s nothing to stop you from enjoying his art though; I loathe Wagner as a person but I still love his music.
I saw one of his plays (forgot the name, though) a couple of years ago. It was hilarious, and I still have the intention to see more of his work when there is an opportunity.