Greg's Reviews > The Collected Plays, Vol. 1: We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay! and Other Works

The collection includes four of Fo’s best known plays. In the introduction, “Translating Paradox into Action” Ron Jenkins states, “But even when he goes abroad, and walks in relative anonymity, Fo often talks to local residents about the architecture of their town, gossips with shopkeepers or invents ironic stories about the history of whatever region he happens to be visiting. Fo’s antennae are always out, scanning his environment for new ideas. The restless landscape of his comic imagination manifests itself in texts, drawings and physical performances that explode with action. The swirling figures he draws on paper propel him to write language that is charged with physicality. His vibrant syntax in turn inspires stage performances of acrobatic virtuosity, in which the actor’s body nimbly twists, bends and contradicts itself as it aspires to the muscular truth of slapstick.” I can’t summarize the major themes of these plays better than that.

“We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!”
In the introduction to this play, “The Comedy of Hunger”, Jenkins notes that hunger is often a theme in Fo’s work. “Although they inhabit a world of spiraling absurdity, Fo’s characters are as real as their hunger. A few months after the play’s 1974 premiere in Italy, several women were arrested for ‘liberating’ food from supermarkets in much the same manner as depicted in We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! The prosecuting attorneys tried to draw Fo into the trial as an accessory for inciting the crime, but the judge overruled the suggestion, apparently agreeing with the author, who claims that his plays are nothing more than ‘documentary reflections of a world in which reality has become its own satire.’” “Samuel Beckett wrote that ‘Nothing is funnier than unhappiness.’ In the comedies of Dario Fo, the same might be said of starvation.” This play is very much Marxist in its alignment, pitting normal people and starvation against the capitalist systems that keep them from their basic needs.

The major characters plot to get what they need through theft. As they are planning the stealing of food and how to hide it, they discuss disguising themselves as pregnant. Margherita states, “Well, if you’re so smart, tell me what I say to my husband when he sees me without a belly…or a baby?” Antonia responds, “Oh, I thought of that already. We’ll tell him that you had a hysterical pregnancy.” After Margherita asks what that is, Antonia responds, “Yes, it happens all the time…a woman thinks she’s pregnant, her belly blows up, and then, when she’s ready to give birth, all that comes out is air. Just air!” In response to the question of where such a pregnancy would come from, Antonia says, “From the pope. He kept coming to you in your dreams and saying, ‘Make a baby! Make a baby!’ So you obeyed him: you made a baby…of air. Just the soul of a baby!...Look at all the times he’s [the Pope’s] dragged us into his stories.” (40)

Later, when confronted by the Trooper who asks, “What’s going on here? Why are you hiding all these vegetables in your stomach?” Antonia responds, “But we didn’t hid anything. Can’t you see? It’s a miracle!?” The Trooper wryly responds, “Yeah, the miracle of Our Lady of the Cabbage!” Antonia very seriously responds, “Well, these days you make a miracle with whatever vegetable you can get your hands on. But whether you believe or not, there’s nothing wrong with it, is there? Is there some law that says a citizen is not allowed to carry chicory, endive, fennel and cabbage in her belly? Is it prohibited?” (46)

Ultimately, this political farce makes a significant statement about the workings, or non-workings, of society. The dialogue is full of sarcasm and the ridiculous, and it is highly entertaining.

“About Face”
Ron Jenkins in his essay on this play, entitled “Comedy, Madness and Freedom” states that “Fo’s method of mining laughter from actual events provokes his audience into seeing their world from fresh perspectives. In the Brechtian terms of epic theatre, Fo makes the familiar strange, presenting situations that everyone thinks they understand in a context that forces a reexamination of what was once taken for granted.” This play radically questions the murder of the Prime Minister of Italy and also the kidnapping of contemporary Italian industrialists. It is a revolutionary play that uses comedy, but also points the way towards violence. The Judge and Inspector are banging on the head of the Policeman. The Inspector asks, “What if the subjected just pretends he can’t remember, or invents things to avoid telling the truth.” The Doctor responds, “No, impossible. In the first phase, which we call the phase of innocence, the patient is incapable of practicing deceptions, because the fiction mechanism, which is the most exposed and ephemeral part of the brain, is always the first to be destroyed by any violent trauma.” The Judge asks, “To sum it up, they don’t know how to pretend or lie. And does this happen in every case?” The Doctor, hilariously responds, “Yes, in every case except that of politicians. Their fiction mechanisms are immune to trauma.”

I find this play pretty troubling because of its incitements. That is not to say Fo isn’t quotable, and the play isn’t powerful. It is, and the comment about politicians included above is quite pithy. Read with care.

“Elizabeth: Almost by Chance a Woman”
Ron Jenkins in his essay on this play, entitled “Subversive Slapstick” states that “In performances of the play, Rame (playing Elizabeth) and Fo occasionally toy with the boundaries between past and present, which are written into the script by partially slipping out of character and improvising dialogue in which the arguments between the Queen and her servant resemble arguments between the husband-and-wife team who has created the work. At one point, as Elizabeth changes her gown behind a screen, Fo jokes that the people in the balcony are getting a view of her underwear. When Rame senses her husband’s improvisation going on too long, she chastises both Fo and his character: ‘Stay in your place and try to be quiet,’ she admonishes, as the monarch, ‘because now I’m the Queen, and for once, at last, you are the Servant. So shut up. Is that clear?’ Fo responds with a mock threat to assert his authorial authority: ‘Dario Fo wrote this play, and he wouldn’t like to see you treating me like this,’ he quips. ‘One word from me and he’ll cross out’Queen’ next to your lines and write in ‘The Maid.’ Fo then steps completely out of character to address the audience directly: ‘She’s really been immersing herself in the role. At home she answers the telephone: ‘Hello, this is the queen speaking.’ The self-parody that Fo and Rame slip into their play enables the spectators to see the bickering of a modern couple overlapping with the squabbling of a sixteenth-century servant and her mistress. The distant past is made more immediate and the play’s complex tapestry of social, literary and political themes becomes more accessible to contemporary audiences.”

In his prologue to the play, Fo sarcastically states, “I hope you enjoy my play, and that you come to share my sympathetic view of the poor misunderstood monarch Elizabeth. She is a failing leader, losing her memory and her health as her empire collapses around her. We are all lucky that awful things like this only happen in the past.”

Taking place in the dressing room of Elizabeth I, she is waiting for her lover, who is also directly involved in an attempt to supplant her from her position. Fo struggled to get a visa to stage the play in the United States, and some of his references in the play draw sarcastic parallels to writers and their past relationships with rulers. Big Mama responds to Elizabeth, “Outrageous. Now I see what he’s up to. This Shakespeare is telling people: ‘What’s up? Why don’t you move your asses? Why do you let yourselves be treated like slaves and animals? Just because you’re afraid of burning in hell? Don’t you idiots realize that hell is here on earth. Not down there. Don’t be afraid to stand up for yourselves. Beat the shit out of your screwed-up government.” Later, Elizabeth responds to Egerton, “Splendid. You concot these harebrained plots without consulting me. And then you make me out to be an hallucinating idiot. So it was only a nightmare. The screams. The shouts. It was the skirmish in Essex, but you all conspired to keep it from me. Even you, Big Mama.”

This play, more than many of his others, allows Fo to directly comment on contemporary life through ridicule of the past.

“Archangels Don’t Play Pinball”
This play follows a group of men in Milan who prank their friend. They trick him into thinking he can marry a princess, who is actually a prostitute in disguise. He decides to legally be declared a dog so that he can get his legal papers for the marriage, but in-so-doing gets purchased by a circus owner. He wakes up from the ridiculous dream with the woman next to him.

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