As Dario Fo took the stage in Rome this week, a conspiratorial anti-authoritarian buzz energised the audience.
True, the riotous agitprop days when he took over a theatre in Milan and skewered the Vatican, the Vietnam-era US and Italy’s entire political and bourgeois classes are long gone. Witness the decidedly unhip and middle-aged crowd in Rome.
Fo, however, remains the archangel of satire in a country whose media - always wracked by self-censorship, self-interest and political bullying - has been particularly fawning and dull since media magnate Silvio Berlusconi became prime minister two years ago.
Only four days before Fo began L’Anomalo Bicefalo (The Abnormal Two-Brainer), during which Berlusconi receives part of Vladimir Putin’s brain, state broadcaster RAI barred another actor, Paolo Rossi, from reciting during a popular Sunday programme segments of a speech by Pericles.
The 2,400-year-old oration from the father of democracy contained what RAI’s powers-that-be must fear to be political dynamite or job endangerment in Berlusconi’s Italy: “An Athenian citizen does not neglect public affairs when taking care of personal matters. But in no circumstance does he take care of public matters to resolve his private issues.”
Two weeks earlier, comic Sabina Guzzanti’s television show was “suspended” by RAI executives following its first late-night airing because it included several cracks aimed at the premier that were deemed too “accusatory”.
Berlusconi’s Mediaset television group went further, suing Guzzanti and her writers for €20m (£14m) for “defamation”. The lawsuit comes five months after parliament gave Berlusconi immunity from prosecution while in office. That lifted him out of one trial where co-defendant and long-time associate Cesare Previti was sentenced last month to five years in prison for bribing judges. For his defence, Previti, Berlusconi’s former lawyer, unashamedly testified that the payments were part of a scheme for the judges to avoid paying taxes. Not surprisingly in this context, Previti’s law firm filed the suit against Guzzanti.
The lawsuit, like many others Berlusconi has brought or threatened to bring against his critics, is meant less to seek compensation than to tie down his less wealthy critics in years of legal fees and red tape.
Thus the time is clearly ripe for Fo to write and perform a commedia dell’arte based on Berlusconi.
Fo and, involuntarily, Berlusconi have been building up to the moment for more than 40 years.
In 1962, Fo and his wife, actress Franca Rame, joined Italy’s most popular television entertainment programme, Canzonissima, only to quit one month later after their hugely popular political and anti-mafia sketches were censured. After they walked out, the state television company sued him and banned him for 15 years from being on television or radio. Fo and Rame also received death threats, many believed to be from organised crime.
That same year, Berlusconi began construction of his first apartment building, the initial step to a real estate empire that would permit him to accumulate local TV stations in the 1970s that - brilliantly - challenged the state’s dull and antiquated TV monopoly.
Fo had thought up L’Anomalo Bicefalo and the transplant of Putin’s brain even before Berlusconi last month stunned journalists by defending Putin and his policies in war-torn Chechnya. During a joint press conference with the Russian leader, the Italian premier took up a question for Putin and proceeded to attack the “international media that keeps insinuating that actions in Russia are against the rule of law”. Pleased with his own response, he then offered to be Putin’s lawyer.
All told, Fo does not lack madcap material. Unfortunately, L’Anomalo Bicefalo leaves you feeling as if you have just tried your first joint and not felt any effect other than the thrill of a mildly illicit act that even your parents have attempted.
Fo plays Berlusconi after terrorists have shot Putin and the Italian premier while together in Sicily. Surgeons take what is left of the dead Russian leader’s brain to salvage Berlusconi’s.
A recovering Berlusconi goes to his wife, Veronica (played by Rame), for solace and asks her why their relationship has cooled over the years. “Because you’re a great big liar,” replies Veronica, who then proceeds to run through many of the numerous legal problems and financially odd deals Berlusconi has been involved in.
To be Berlusconi, Fo has reverted to one of his classic tricks: half puppet, half man, Fo reduces Berlusconi to the size of a midget by walking in a trench in the stage. A mime behind his back serves as Berlusconi’s arms, while Fo uses his arms as legs.
Visually clever, the gag is old: cartoonists regularly spoof the premier for wearing special heels to gain an inch, but in a country where half the population is no taller, the jab falls flat.
More disappointing is the failure to develop the brilliantly zany cross between Putin, the former KGB chief, and Berlusconi, the politician who still accuses virtually everyone who is against him of being a communist. Fo’s Berlusconi occasionally becomes Putin-delirious (”Where’s the Duma?” he asks out of the blue) but for the most part the dialogue is a didactic rehash of Berlusconi’s questionable past.
As with all of Fo’s plays, this is a work in progress. Fo’s riotous mind will likely elaborate the two-brained monster by the time L’Anomalo Bicefalo travels beyond Rome.
No doubt Berlusconi or his admirers would not mind banning the play. Indeed, a board member of Milan’s Piccolo Teatro (and wife of a RAI board member) recently suggested as much. But one of the first to defend Fo and the play was none other than Veronica Lario.
Asked about banning the play at the Piccolo, where it will run in January, Lario said: “Censorship is a terrible, odious thing. I’m sure there won’t be any.” She had just walked out of that same theatre, having watched another play poking fun at her husband.
First published December 5, 2003
