A televised performance of Dario Fo’s celebrated political farce about police corruption and institutional absurdity.
A quick-witted fantasist known only as the Maniac (Gavin Richards) is arrested for impersonation and brought to a Milan police station. There, he learns of the recent death of an anarchist railway worker who supposedly threw himself from a fourth-floor window during an interrogation. Seizing an opportunity, the Maniac assumes a series of false identities, including a high-ranking judge, to re-investigate the case. He proceeds to run rings around the hapless Inspector Pissani (Jim Bywater) and the blustering Superintendent (Clive Russell), exposing the glaring contradictions and outright lies in their official account of the anarchist’s death.
This production was a faithful television transfer of the Belt and Braces Theatre Company’s hugely successful stage show. Based on a 1970 play by Italian satirist Dario Fo, which was itself a response to the real-life death of anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli in police custody, the adaptation by Gavin Richards is a furious piece of political theatre. It uses the mechanics of farce not for escapism but as a direct assault on state brutality and the corruption of power. The television version, shot with a live audience, successfully captures the anarchic energy and agitprop intensity of the original performance; its fourth-wall breaking and knockabout slapstick serve as a vehicle for a piercing indictment of institutional mendacity.
Broadcast: Channel 4, 1 Episode, 23 December 1985
Adapted by: Gavin Richards
Based on the play by: Dario Fo
Directed for television by: Alan Horrox
Directed for the stage by: Gavin Richards
Producers: John Ellis, Tara Prem
Main Cast: Gavin Richards (The Maniac), Jim Bywater (Inspector Pissani), Susan Denaker (Maria Feletti), Gavin Muir (Constable/Lift Attendant), Clive Russell (Superintendent), John Surman (Inspector Bertozzo), Brigid O’Hara (Photographer / Suspect)
