Scan barcode
A review by sidharthvardhan
Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo
5.0
The play is based on the real life event - the death of an anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli (never named in play) who committed suicide by jumping, or fell or was thrown from a police station's window after being accused of bombing a bank. He was later cleared of the charge.
The imagined events of Fo's play occur sometime after that. The protagonist, simply called Maniac is one of the funniest characters in all plays I have read - he is a bit like Jack Sparrow, in that until the end there is no way to know whose side he is on or even if he has a real take on the issue. He repeatedly fakes identities and outsmarts police officers - a job made easy by their corruption and hypocrisy. The big final revelation is that the anarchist was a victim of Italian government who was pursuing something called Strategy of Tension.
The play faced a lot of challenged within Italy including threats of bombing the theater but it didn't affect its popularity. There is a moment when a police officer says that they have spies in audience itself and some voices are heard from among viewers - while this two-way fourth wall breaking is clever in itself, what the officer adds - that they are only fake spies and actual ones are stil sitting silently, might be pointing to the truth given the times it was first performed.
The theme is something universal. In fact, all the time I was reading I was thinking that it might have been written for India or anywhere where people enjoy a good satire (technically it is a farce, not satire) on corrupt government officials - and it has been performed here after making changes to make settings Indian. What's more, India is only one of 40+ other countries where it has been performed
The imagined events of Fo's play occur sometime after that. The protagonist, simply called Maniac is one of the funniest characters in all plays I have read - he is a bit like Jack Sparrow, in that until the end there is no way to know whose side he is on or even if he has a real take on the issue. He repeatedly fakes identities and outsmarts police officers - a job made easy by their corruption and hypocrisy. The big final revelation is that the anarchist was a victim of Italian government who was pursuing something called Strategy of Tension.
The play faced a lot of challenged within Italy including threats of bombing the theater but it didn't affect its popularity. There is a moment when a police officer says that they have spies in audience itself and some voices are heard from among viewers - while this two-way fourth wall breaking is clever in itself, what the officer adds - that they are only fake spies and actual ones are stil sitting silently, might be pointing to the truth given the times it was first performed.
The theme is something universal. In fact, all the time I was reading I was thinking that it might have been written for India or anywhere where people enjoy a good satire (technically it is a farce, not satire) on corrupt government officials - and it has been performed here after making changes to make settings Indian. What's more, India is only one of 40+ other countries where it has been performed