Trumpets and Raspberries
By Dario Fo
Presented by Melbourne's New Theatre as part of the Melbourne Comedy Festival
The Organ Factory, Clifton Hill until April 18
Reviewed by Peter Boyle
Italian playwright Dario Fo has a unique talent for political satire. In Trumpets and Raspberries we have a madcap comedy which tackles with incisiveness the very contemporary issues of big business and the state, police violence and establishment "leftism", all in a way that even the least politically minded will find enjoyable.
Trumpets and Raspberries is the unlikely story of Antonio (a card-carrying communist who works in a Fiat factory), who accidentally stumbles on a failed attempt to kidnap Gianni Agnelli, the head of the Fiat empire. Antonio saves Agnelli from a burning vehicle, unaware of who he is, but then takes off in fright when people start shooting at him.
Agnelli is taken to hospital unrecognisably disfigured, minus his memory and in Antonio's jacket. There, through plastic surgery, he is transformed into a second Antonio. Add a menacing leather-jacketed police inspector, ubiquitous undercover cops, furniture that moves, a corrupt magistrate, Antonio's wife Rosa and his mistress Lucia, and there's potential for lots of craziness.
The flip side to the celebrated Fo phenomenon is that his scripts can require a lot of work to translate into successful performance, according to director Gary Dooley. Anyone who has seen British Channel Four's TV version of Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist will realise how demanding a stage performance of a Fo script can be. "One worries about how much will be understood by an audience which may not know anything of Italian politics, but at the same time you mustn't patronise an audience", Dooley told Green Left..
The end result of many hours of workshopping and experimentation with different theatrical styles is a production that works amazingly well. It could not have worked so well without assistant director Peta Hanrahan's choreographic experience and a dedicated and close-knit cast, said Dooley. An over-the-top performance by Wendy Little as Rosa helps carry off a final act which was politically a little overloaded.
The audience does not need to know much of the political context except that former Christian Democrat premier of Italy, Aldo Moro, who was kidnapped by leftists in 1978, was sacrificed by the Italian state to make the point that it wouldn't deal with terrorists. Dario Fo says the state may sacrifice part of itself, but can it sacrifice the real power it serves?