Theatre
Double Fo
Manoel Theatre
There is something very particular about the brand of humour which the people of the Mediterranean have in common. It is equally dark and farcical, blunt and visceral, creating a resultant hilarity which is hard to match.
Indeed, nothing beats a good dose of Italian comedy and Unifaun’s double bill of it, Double Fo, last weekend, was a clear exponent of a style that Dario Fo was keen to explore – character-driven, situational comedies, which brought a sense of levity to his more serious, sociopolitical and academically inclined work.
Fo’s work in translation by Joseph Farrell did not lose any of its original humour. I did feel that having both plays acted with a Italian accent did nothing for the comedy itself and smacked rather of the stereotypical. This being said, the quality of the work itself was very high and certainly enjoyable.
The first short play on offer, The Virtuous Burglar, had Philip Stilon star as a burglar who is interrupted by a phone call, mid-robbery, from his wife (Magda Van Kuilenburg), who proceeds to give him a good earful (what in Italian is described beautifully as a ramanzina).
The ensuing conversation and the fact that the situation they found themselves in was ludicrous to the extreme was only exacerbated by the fact that, once the conversation had ended, the burglar was interrupted by the homeowner (Mikhail Basmadjian) with the woman he hoped to make his mistress (Coryse Borg).
Hiding inside a large grandfather clock, the burglar is first subjected to the trysting couple’s love problems, as the woman agonises about the moral looseness of their situation and refuses to go to bed; and then is exposed by his wife’s second phone call on the apartment’s land line.
The burglar’s wife, incensed at certain insinuations made and worried that her husband is up to no good with the ‘woman’ at the flat, ends up involving the homeowner’s wife Anna (Charlotte Grech) who turns up with her own lover, Antonio, in tow (Alan Paris).
Both Stilon and Van Kuilenburg stole the show in this piece, with their fast-paced catty conversation of the ‘yes dear’ variety impeccably performed. Basmadjian and Borg gave great accompanying performances, feeding off each other and pulling off the overly eager, randy Casanova and the not-so-innocent love conquest very well.
Double Duo made for a very enjoyable evening
Grech’s haughty Anna was just as disinterested in her husband as he was in her. This contrasted with her character Teresa in the second short play, Marcolfa, this time set in a 19th century Neapolitan palazzo where the brilliant Alan Paris (in drag) played old Marcolfa whose apparent lottery win makes her suddenly desirable to her master, the desperately indebted Marchese di Trerate (Edward Mercieca).
Paris is a great comic actor and, paired with the inimitable Mercieca, bagged plenty of laughs in this send-up of the populist melodrama style where every emotion and reaction is heightened and exaggerated.
This was the premiere of Marcolfa in English and the cast, with Basmadjian as Giuseppe, Teresa’s husband, Renato Dimech as the servant Francesco and Borg as the Principessa, the Marchese’s surreptitious love interest, all gave well-choreographed, polished performances.
The versatility of the actors in taking on generically divergent roles was admirable, while director Chris Gatt’s tight vision for the blocking and interpretation was evident, in spite of the fact that the second play was notably less refined in terms of the generic and dramatic legacies to which it affiliates itself.
Romualdo Moretti’s set design was, as always, the ideal backdrop for the two pieces, which incidentally both included a considerable number of people hiding and disappearing into constructed furniture, getting several laughs from the audience.
Double Fo made for a very enjoyable evening out and is not to be missed.
• Double Fo is also being staged at the Manoel Theatre on Friday and Sunday at 8pm.