ARCHIVE SEASON 20 | September 2007

review

VORTEX Repertory Company and Renaissance Austin are pleased to present one of our all-time favorite political satires, Accidental Death of An Anarchist by Dario Fo. This production uses the highly acclaimed translation by Ron Jenkins and Gloria Pastorino.

Did the anarchist fall or was he pushed? Was he really an anarchist at all? Who is the madman? What did the male ballet dancer have to do with it? Why was the ambulance called five minutes before the alleged fall? These and many other questions are asked (though not necessarily answered) in this hilarious, fast-paced comedy that snaps at our judicial institutions as much as it entertains the spectator.

In 1969, Giuseppe Pinelli, supposedly a card-carrying member of the anarchist party, fell to his death from a police headquarters window after allegedly confessing to the bombing of a Milan railway station. The judge ruled at the inquest that the death was "accidental." In the meantime the general public were starved of relevant details as to what really happened.

Not surprising then, that Dario Fo wrote his own version of these events centering around a nameless lunatic who breaks into the police station posing as the judge who has come to reopen the investigation. In the process, all manner of police inconsistencies and inadequacies are revealed to hysterical effect. Dario Fo won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1996 and is widely considered Italy's premiere playwright. He examines contemporary society with working-class eyes, and infuses his play with the theatrical traditions of commedia dell'arte and slapstick farce. His work goes far beyond the boundaries of a particular nation, however, and is equally relevant in today's USA as it was in the Italy of the 70s, where it caused an immense furore with political and religious institutions and instantly became a bit hit with the public. It is not surprising that he was denied a visa to the USA for two decades.

In a year when American judicial corruption and erosion of freedoms has been so extreme, now is the time for Accidental Death of an Anarchist.

Robert Deike as the MADMAN/MANIC/FOOL; Mick D'arcy as INSPECTOR BERTOZZO; Gabriel Maldonado as the COMMISSIONER, Hannah Kenah as THE TURTLENECK INSPECTOR, Shekhar Govind and Briana McKeague

Directed by Lorella Loftus.

Renaissance Austin is funded in part by VORTEX Repertory Company, the City of Austin under the auspices of the Austin Arts Commission, and the Texas Commission on the Arts.