Accidental Death of an Anarchist by Dario Fo

First published:Morte accidentale di un anarchico, 1970 (English translation, 1979)

First produced: 1970, at the Capanonne of Via Colletta, Milan, Italy

Type of plot: Farce; political

Time of work: 1970

Locale: Milan, Italy

Principal Characters:

• Maniac, a madman who impersonates figures of high authority
• Bertozzo, and
• Pissani, police inspectors
• The Superintendent, the inspectors’ superior officer
• Maria Feletti, a journalist

The Play

Accidental Death of an Anarchist opens in the central police headquarters in Milan, in a drab, ordinary office room. A large window forms a central part of the set. Inspector Bertozzo and a constable enter, and Bertozzo begins a direct address to the audience in which he states the official version of the anarchist’s death, insisting that the police verdict of “accidental death” was “quite reasonable.” The anarchist, he maintains, fell from a window of the Milan police headquarters. The constable brings in the Maniac, who is dressed as a clichéd version of a Freudian analyst and who carries four overstuffed plastic bags. Bertozzo takes the Maniac’s statement, constantly being distracted and disrupted by the Maniac’s antics, the focal point of which is the Maniac’s qualifications in the field of psychoanalysis by virtue of having been in fifteen “looney bins.” Bertozzo throws the Maniac out and leaves for a meeting.

The Maniac reenters and begins to “dispense justice,” as he explains, by pitching his own and others’ files out the window. When the telephone rings, the Maniac answers, and, on discovering the caller to be Inspector Pissani, Bertozzo’s superior, the Maniac impersonates the judge who is being sent to investigate the anarchist’s death, thus setting up Bertozzo’s exposure later in the play. During the telephone call, the Maniac pretends that Bertozzo is in the room shouting insults at Inspector Pissani and giving him “raspberries.” When Bertozzo actually returns, the Maniac advises him to avoid Pissani; Bertozzo forcibly ejects the Maniac from the office and discovers the missing files. The scene ends in chaos as Inspector Pissani enters and, set up by the Maniac, promptly knocks out Bertozzo.

Scene 2 moves to the actual room in which the “accidental death” happened. The Maniac enters, this time disguised as Professor Marco Maria Malipiero, the investigating judge. Pissani and the constable are fully deceived, and the phony judge begins his investigation, successfully tricking the Superintendent and Pissani into deeper revelations of their own corruption. They reenact the scene and reveal that there was no proof for the accusation, that the confession was forced by intimidation tactics, and that, as the Maniac says, “we’re dealing with a campaign of sustained psychological violence followed by a public exhibition of outrageous and contradictory lies.” Act 1 culminates with the Maniac leading the inspector and the Superintendent to the window and suggesting that they jump, causing first their total breakdown and then a reconstruction of events in which they befriend the anarchist and sing a four-part harmony to the “Song of Anarchy.”

Act 2 turns simultaneously more serious and more absurd as the investigation continues. The Maniac reveals further lies about the official report and the brutality with which the confession was obtained. The absurdity of the report is revealed by the Maniac’s deductions, such as his claim that the anarchist would have to have been a tripod for the terms of the report to prove logical. These musings reveal that a shoe was planted as evidence after the fact. As the Maniac gets closer and closer to the truth, the Superintendent and Pissani quarrel, and in the heat of it reveal that they pushed the man out the window. The exposure of official corruption is thus complete through the Maniac’s phony investigation.

The action turns because they are expecting a journalist, of whom they are afraid because she, Maria Feletti, is left-wing and aware of their tactics. The Maniac helps them further, disguising himself as a police expert in an outrageous costume complete with glass eye and wooden arms and legs. General chaos ensues around a bomb that may or may not be real, Feletti asks too many questions, and the Maniac is discovered to be the Maniac. A chase scene culminates in a serious speech by the Maniac about class exploitation. Bertozzo loses his composure completely and resorts to force, backing Pissani, the Superintendent, and the constables up against the audience and handcuffing them to the window frame. The Maniac reveals he has taped their confession and that he plans to leave and blow them all up, thus partly achieving the destruction of the capitalist police state. The Maniac’s last action is to confront the journalist with a choice and the audience with alternative endings. He gives Feletti the keys to the handcuffs. The corrupt police beg her to release them, but the Maniac reminds her and the audience of police complicity with torture and police brutality all over the world, citing the student revolt in Paris and the failed revolution in Chile. The Maniac prepares to leave, taking the evidence with him. The journalist may choose to allow the Maniac to get away, thus sealing her own involvement with revolutionary activity; or unlock the handcuffed officers, ensuring the Maniac’s death and the destruction of evidence against the police. In the end, Fo dramatizes the choice and the Maniac narrates both, showing the audience that they, too, must choose.

Dramatic Devices

Dario Fo’s theater is rooted in the populist tradition and is designed with mass audiences and political reform in mind. The texts of his plays, despite the existence of published versions, change given the locale and context of performance. Its primary dramatic devices come from Italian popular and Brechtian theater practice. Improvisation by Fo himself alters the play for each audience: Physical action, standard theater gags (the hand caught in the drawer, the disguises), and direct address continually remind the audience that they are watching a play made of constructed roles.

The Maniac disguises himself as character after character and fools the police in the play, though the audience knows his masks. The shifting disguises actually increase the audience’s awareness of the artificiality or constructed nature of any role. As the Maniac puts on the costume of the judge or forensic expert with false mustache, wooden leg, false eye, the audience sees the necessity of disguise to negotiate the treacherous thicket of state corruption. Moreover, it is clear through the actions of the Maniac that those in power manipulate facts to serve their own ends. Therefore, the whole idea of disguise is central to the actors’ roles and the human reality treated by the play. Through Fo’s Brechtian exposure of the theatrical apparatus itself, the issue of choice comes to the surface; identity is posited not as a fixed or absolute entity, but as a socially, politically, and dramatically constructed practice that can and will change through what the individual does and engaged political action.

In addition to distancing devices and theatrical gags, the use of a historical and a politically incendiary incident demonstrates the fusion of Fo’s left-wing politics and his artistic operating mode. Fo wants to augment the struggle of the working class against repressive power, and the use of a real event cast in absurdly farcical terms drives home Fo’s radical politics. The extremity and breadth of the comedy targets not only the police but human social and political behavior in general, thus preventing a reduction to diatribe and encouraging liberating laughter. Throughout, Fo’s dramatic devices suggest that the Accidental Death of an Anarchist was no accident at all; Fo supplants the absurd lies of the official version with the complex and frightening truth of state corruption.

Critical Context

Accidental Death of an Anarchist takes a historical incident for its base. In 1969, Giuseppe Pinelli, an anarchist railway worker, was arrested in connection with a bombing in Milan, Italy. During police interrogation, as the official version went, he “fell” from a window in the Milan police headquarters. The official judgment of “accidental” did not account for blatant inconsistencies and absurd contradictions in the police report, however, and subsequent investigations revealed the probable innocence of the worker and extensive police and government corruption. Dario Fo re-creates the investigation, and in doing so exposes the motives and treachery of the police and government.

Dario Fo and his collaborator and wife, Franca Rame, have been active in Italian and European theater for more than fifty years, performing in more than twenty-four countries, in thousands of venues to what must number in the millions of people. Despite this enormous success and popularity in Europe, it was not until the late 1970’s and early 1980’s that their collaborative works came to the attention of English-speaking audiences. The 1983 London production of Non si paga! Non si paga! (pr., pb. 1974; We Can’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! 1978) and Accidental Death of an Anarchist finally brought these plays critical recognition. Fo’s improvisation, his topicality, and his political engagement, and the commitment both he and Rame have to creating a popular theater account for the importance of the work. Accidental Death of an Anarchist captures the mood and social reality of the late 1960’s, as well as making an ongoing statement about the dangers of power.

Fo won the prestigious Nobel Prize in Literature in 1997. Another measure of his success has been the variety and importance of his antagonists. He was initially denied a visa to perform in the United States; he has been widely vilified and attacked in Europe; he has been condemned by the Vatican and the Italian Communist Party. He and his wife have been jailed and physically assaulted. Comments such as those of Pier Pasolini in Panorama (1973) are not uncommon: “My opinion of Dario Fo is so negative that I refuse to talk about him. Fo is a kind of plague on the Italian theater.” His plays have caused demonstrations, have been halted by the police, have caused turmoil and agitation wherever they were performed, but often this agitation has been the foment of thought and social change. The newness and excitement of his improvisatory techniques, the content, the politics of his vision, have also meant extremely high praise and critical and popular success.

Sources for Further Study

Cowan, Suzanne. “Dario Fo: Bibliography, Biography, Playography.” Theatre Quarterly 17 (1978).

Cowan, Suzanne. “The Throw-away Theatre of Dario Fo,” The Drama Review 19 (June, 1975): 103-113.

Farrell, Joseph, and Antonio Scuderi. Dario Fo: Stage, Text, Tradition. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 2000.

Kushner, Tony. “Fo’s Last Laugh—I, Fo’s Last Laugh—II.” The Nation, November, 3, 1997, 4-5.

Mitchell, Tony. Dario Fo: People’s Court Jester. 1984. Rev. ed. London: Methuen, 1999.

Mitchell, Tony. “Dario Fo’s Mistero Buffo: Popular Theatre, the Giullari, and the Grotesque.” Theatre Quarterly 9 (Autumn, 1979): 1-10.

Schechter, Joel. “Dario Fo’s Obscene Fables.” Theater 14 (Winter, 1982): 87-90.

Sogliuzzo, A. Richard. “Dario Fo: Puppets for a Proletarian Revolution.” Drama Review 16 (September, 1972): 72-77.

Wade, Alan. Review of Accidental Death of an Anarchist. Theatre Journal 36 (October, 1984): 416-417.