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Review
by Lisa Drostova for East Bay Express
Silliness and Slapstick
Dario Fo's commedia dell'arte: Don't try this at home.
BY LISA DROSTOVA
I'm sure we've all thought about only paying what we wanted
to for something, whether it's a car or our weekly groceries. Isn't
that the whole idea behind Priceline.com and those silly William Shatner
ads? But while most of us just dream of it, in Italy in the '70s, people
actually did it. The movement was called autoriduzione, with people
choosing to limit their work hours, their output, and what they paid
for goods. It was a natural response for people tired of being "held
hostage by a minimum-wage job," to quote a character of playwright
Dario Fo's, people "hungry for dignity. Hungry for justice, for
a chance." Fo and his writing partner and wife Franca Rame were
deeply sensitive to the plight of the working class; the result was
the 1974 premiere of We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!, a hilarious dig at
trying to make ends meet in a world of plenty.
The story begins with a crime and swiftly grows silly, absurdity piling
up on top of absurdity. The play opens with Antonia describing to her
friend Margherita how women at the supermarket staged an impromptu protest
against rising prices by "liberating" their groceries. Antonia's
glee swiftly turns to consternation: Her husband Giovanni is a law-and-order
sort of guy, and he's not going to like this one bit. Some of the purloined
goods end up hidden in Margherita's coat, leading to a charade of pregnancy
that gets truly out of hand and drives the rest of the play. There are
cops to deal with (all played by the same actor, per Fo), a stray coffin,
the vengeful Santa Eulalia, and Giovanni's "discovery" that
fetuses in the womb float in pickle juice.
Fo, who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, is a modern disciple
of commedia dell'arte, the 16th-century Italian theatrical form best
known to American audiences for the creation of Harlequin (Arlecchino)
and the introduction of the "slapstick," a paddle-like wooden
device with a hinged piece that makes a sharp crack when swung, a vital
prop for any self-respecting Arlecchino. Commedia's influence is subtle
and wide-ranging -- we can see it in the work of performers such as
the Marx Brothers and the San Francisco Mime Troupe, who started out
playing commedia in the early '60s.
We Won't Pay bears the imprint of Fo's interest in commedia. The characters
can be loosely identified by "mask" or type, especially Giovanni
and Antonia. Antonia (Katja Rivera) and Giovanni (Clive Worsley, who
hasn't had a chance to catch his breath after Troilus and Cressida)
are exaggerated yet believable, with some really zany (another commedia
contribution, from the word "zanni" for a certain type of
character) mugging and scheming. Antonia's a lot smarter than Giovanni,
but she mostly seems to use it to come up with outrageous stories. She
manages to sucker poor Margherita (Andrea Day) into her crazy scheme
and then sells it to Giovanni, Margherita's husband Luigi (Ian Petroni),
and the State Trooper (Kevin Kelleher, who is hilarious as both cops
and as Giovanni's father, but especially as the undertaker).
I thought the few asides were director Rebecca Novick's additions,
but I was wrong: Fo had written them. The last monologue seemed unnecessary
and didactic, and I assumed that it too had been tacked on, but evidently
Fo isn't taking any chances on people not understanding the point he's
trying to make. This is consistent with the bold, simplified world of
commedia dell'arte, but sometimes consistency hobnobs with the hobgoblins.
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eastbayexpress.com | originally published: September 25, 2002
Original article on the web at
http://www.eastbayexpress.com/issues/2002-09-25/theater.html/1/index.html
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