​ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST REVIEW

​ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST
By Dario Fo
 
Three River Theatre Company
November 2022
 
One of the difficulties facing a director when presenting Dario Fo’s ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST is to decide whether this is an all-purpose protest play, or just a whimsical, knockabout farce. For this Three River Theatre production, director Troy Ridgway has chosen the latter.
If you didn’t know that the play was actually about a real-life situation which happened in Italy in the 1960s, it would still hold up as a cleverly constructed piece of farce with nods to the Carry On films, the best of British comedies (think Goodies, Python, et al), and English eccentrics at their finest. Perhaps that’s why Ridgeway has set this piece in England, to give it a familiar context for an audience more at home with this genre.
You might also think that farce was a strange choice given that the play was originally conceived as a hard-hitting political drama designed to arouse anger over a death in custody of an innocent man.
You can see how there are many conflicting ideas to resolve, especially when the themes of corruption, police brutality and political manipulation were genuine areas of Fo’s concern, as indeed they still are today. I wondered how this play might stand up with a Down Under interpretation, with the same ideas but with Aussie characters and the added twist of our larrikinism, mateship and thumbing at authority juxtaposed against our own deaths in custody, cultural and heritage issues of all kinds, some proposed laws which might ban legitimate protest, and Royal Commissions into just about everything.
Fo, an Italian dramatist, comedian, singer, director, designer, song writer, political campaigner and even a Nobel Prize winner, gives director Ridgway some guided choice in how to present the work, for in choosing farce there are already built-in text and character elements familiar to any Italian: commedia dell’arte. There’s a Zanni (with Matt Harris as The Maniac), Il Capitano (Leigh Oswin as Superintendent), Pulcinella (Robbie Bleakley as Inspector), Columbina (Lucy Pullen as Journalist), and a couple of dim-witted Harlequins (Jack Oates-Pryor as Bertozzo, and Gabriel Walton-Clear as Constable). They are all there if you look for them but while Ridgway’s actors farce their way through the genre he does not hint at their theatrical history with any kind of costume motif or specific action. It doesn’t matter: there are plenty of other elements in the show to keep an audience thoroughly occupied and entertained.
And entertained we were through situations that were highly exaggerated, extravagant, ridiculous, absurd, and improbable. The cast handled the wordy text with thrilling performances and superb comic timing. Apparently this version of the translated text removes some metatheatre, but Ridgway and the cast have found ways to reinstate it through making glorious fun of the plot, cracking jokes at their own (and sometimes the audience’s) expense, and giving the occasional nod-and-a wink ‘say no more’.
Matt Harris dives deep down into his theatrical trick bag and pulls out an outstanding performance of psychotic lunacy. He has definitely mastered the art of story telling, and there’s a lot of story to be told. In his superb range of funny voices, and funny walks, he kept true to his character’s name (The Maniac, or Zanni, from which we get the word ‘zany’).
Leigh Oswin and Robbie Bleakley usually play heavy, grounded characters, but here they have found new and to me surprising roles which they fit into with ease. Their physical theatre skills are on show centre stage as much as their commitment to the text, and they each relish the mayhem with ease. Their comic pairing in the slapstick moments was one of many of the show’s highlights. 
Lucy Pullen makes a welcome return to the stage, with an accomplished performance which pushed the boundaries of the written text to new heights. My reading of ‘Journalist’ didn’t include the ‘wow’ factors which we saw on stage. Very impressive.
Jack Oates-Pryor, and Gabriel Walton-Clear suffered mockery and abuse throughout but like all stereotypes of bumbling policemen, their policemen’s lot was not a happy one. Their focus was definitely in the moment and each incongruously gave us hilarious moments of deadpan schtick.
Troy Ridgway is to be congratulated for his masterful directing of this work. There is so much to admire about the way he has worked with his actors to present a huge plot canvas, yet has added hundreds of moments, some only seconds long, to embellish what might otherwise be a rather plain piece of drama. There is so much going on that if you watch a moment on stage right you’re likely to miss a couple on stage left, and yet the whole is entirely coherent.
However, some of the staging elements and production design seem to have been lost in the mix, for there seemed to be unexplored opportunities in costume, lighting and props, which could have added that extra comic touch to support the superb work of the actors.
One final thought, and I don’t believe I am saying it, but it seemed to me that the stage of the Earl Arts Centre was too big for this show. I could imagine all sorts of claustrophobic comic opportunities in a space half as big.
That said, this is a wonderful interpretation of a play with important topical issues to impart, and that fact that we as an audience laughed our way through it, yet seriously discussed its issues moments after it ended, is a tribute to a talented director and a skilled ensemble cast.
 
Jeff Hockley.