Author: Ian Mariani
On Dec. 12, 1969, a bomb blew up in the Agricultural Bank in Milan. 72 hours later, anarchist Giovanni Pinelli flew out of the fourth story window of the Milan police headquarters. What ensued thereafter, as far as playwright Dario Fo is concerned, was comedic gold. And it seemed that Occidental’s Theater department was up to that challenge.
The play opens on Inspector Bertozzo (played by a perfectly brutish first-year Declan Meagher) interrogating an arrested maniac turned fake psychiatrist (senior Giulia Davis), with a police officer (Emily Bragg ’14) looking on. Bertozzo outlines the maniac’s previous impersonations, all the while fighting the attempted escapes of Davis’ eccentric character. Soon after Bertozzo leaves, the maniac breaks free and intercepts a call from the chief inspector, at which point the maniac dons the persona of the judge whom the chief inspector was anticipating. And with that, the play was afoot.
It is in this scene that it became very clear that Davis was on track to steal the show. Her comedic rant borders on monologue as she brushes off every attempt by Bertozzo to silence her, prancing across the stage, spouting line after line of Fo’s biting dialogue. Fo’s writing of the maniac was clearly meant to be comedic, but Davis’ theatricality drips wit.
It is worth noting that at this point in the play, the anarchist and his unfortunate end have not be mentioned once. The actual description of the events preceding the play comes only for the nosy theater-goers who had read the program thoroughly before the performance commenced.
That soon begins to change as the play continues. The second act of the play begins with the entrance of three more stellar additions to the cast: the chief police inspector (Robert Lundgren ’13), the police commissioner (Corey Libown ’13) and a third police officer (Stephen Mann ’13).
At the entrance of the “judge,” a well-crafted incarnation by Davis’ maniac, all three quickly reveal themselves to be invertebrates, all eager to please the powers above and pass blame to those below. The judge, whose purpose was to reassess the case of the dead anarchist, quickly begins by having the three take him through the events of the night the anarchist died.
Their goal is to somehow identify the cause of the so-called “raptus” that took hold of the anarchist, causing him to jump from the fourth story window, but the maniac quickly takes the plot for ride, inciting in the three authorities the very anarchy they had set out to squash. The first half of the play ends with the maniac convincing the three men that in the course of that night, they must have had a moment so pure with the anarchist that they began to sing the Guthrie classic “This Land is Your Land.” The coerced song-and-dance number that followed was perhaps the most memorably humorous moment in the play.
At intermission, I found that I had to remind myself that the judge was in fact not a judge at all, but still Davis’ brilliant maniac. The audience, like me, likely found themselves forgetting completely that the judge was faking, as Davis nails every personality tick to create a completely new character. The only reminders came with the occasional fourth wall break as Davis would glance out into the crowd, smirking and eliciting a laugh as the audience alone understood the true irony of the judge’s words.
The second half of the play began with the arrival of a reporter (Alexa Soriano ’13) investigating the death. At this point in the production, the maniac begins to spout mantras of change, touting reform instead of revolution and saying that scandals like the death of the anarchist are “the fertilizers of democracy.” These mantras really encompassed an overall shift in the play to the political, while still drawing from the various comedic tropes the play employs.
In the end, the play begins to pit characters against each other. Bertozzo returns to the scene and eventually exposes the maniac’s true identity. Guns are drawn. And in the end, the maniac, a bomb in hand, flies out the window just like the anarchist. But what happened between is hard to describe. It’s not even a matter of spoilers, its just impossible to identify exactly what was really meant by the ending.
Simply put, the ending was a complicated and unsatisfactory conclusion to an otherwise electric production. Davis carried the show with the help of great performances from every cast member and superb directing from Assistant Professor Jamie Angell. Dario Fo’s writing was certainly done justice, and in the end, the production still earned its standing ovation.
This article has been archived, for more requests please contact us via the support system.
