DARIO FO'S ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST

SYNOPSIS OF THE PLAY

Accidental Death of an Anarchist is a comic farce based on a real-life incident that took place in Italy in 1969. The setting for the play is a police station where the main character, the Maniac, proceeds to investigate an incident in which an anarchist fell from the fourth floor window of the Police Headquarters where he was being interrogated. In doing so he reveals the idiocy of the lies spun by officialdom.

The power of the play derives from the tension, deliberately set up by the playwright, between the comedy arising from confusions of identity and the tragic circumstances surrounding the death of an innocent man. It is Dario Fo's firm belief that laughter opens people's minds and makes them receptive to ideas that they might otherwise reject. In keeping with this, the play is full of funny situations and characters guaranteed to cause a riot of laughter! Dario Fo is Italy's leading contemporary playwright, renowned throughout the world for his dazzling and radical comic satires. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997.

Directed by Oliver Campbell-Calder

THE CAST

Scott Voloshin:   The Maniac
Dyfed Wyn Huws:   Inspector Bertozzo
Tao Hildebrand:   Pissani
Paul Little:   Superintendent
Sylvain Verdier:   Constable
Nancy Stevner:   Maria Feletti