REVIEW BY IGGY KIM
Abducting Diana
Written by Dario Fo
Directed and adapted by Shane Morgan
With Hayley Buckley, Martin Viski, Moira Hunt, Mark Duffy, Mandy Thomas, Joanne Trentini and Shaun Parker
Playing at the New Theatre, Sydney, until August 31
"Nowadays we feel it is our duty to rush to the defence of the rich", states the preface written by Franca Rame, lifelong collaborator and companion of radical Italian satirist, Dario Fo to the original script upon which Abducting Diana is based.
You can picture the deep smirks on their faces as the preface continues, "these days the workers have given up the class struggle and the only ones who still carry it on, fearlessly but alone, and with great difficulty, are the employers. They never give up!"
In this uproarious "defence of the rich", media magnate Diana Forbes-McKaye (played by Hayley Buckley) is kidnapped while subjecting a journalist plaything (Martin Viski) to her sexual whims.
Forbes-McKaye is taken to a disused ice cream factory where she eventually cooks up a deal with the not-so-bright kidnappers (Moira Hunt, Mark Duffy, Mandy Thomas) and arranges the ransom money. When two of them leave to pick up the money, Diana gets the better of the third kidnapper, sadistically electrocuting his genitals before locking him in a fridge. She calls her sister, Francesca (Joanne Trentini), for help.
At this point a priest (Shaun Parker) stumbles onto the scene, the rest of the kidnappers return and after Diana tries to outwit her captors, the masterminds are revealed. But then the final truth emerges.
From the bumbling kidnappers, to the sadistic Diana, her geeky journalist toy-boy, the sleazy priest and venomous sister, Dario Fo brings them down in a riotous combination of cheap soap-opera and garish media sensationalism.
This version of the play is based on an English adaptation by Stephen Stenning. In Fo's original script, The Kidnapping of Francesca, the lead character was Francesca Bollini de Rill, a wealthy banker on the verge of bankruptcy.
Despite the brilliant performances by the New Theatre's ensemble, it seems some depth has been lost from the original due to the immense difficulty of culturally translating Fo's acidic wit, which is heavily dependent on the nuances of the Italian language, a long tradition of political clowning and the specific tales and woes of Italian class society.
Because of this, there is a danger that the comedy becomes a series of nonetheless hilarious situation gags, rather than the sharp political satire that is the flesh and blood of Fo's work.
From Green Left Weekly, August 14, 2002.
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