CAST

The Virtuous Burglar

Burglar - Andy Hamilton
Burglar's Wife - Jean Challendar
Enzo - Anthony Worssam
Julia - Costandina Stavinides
Anna - Louise Melotte
Antonio - Phil Canale
Second Burglar - Tim Goble

Accidental Death of an Anarchist

Bertozzo - Ignacio Saiz
Maniac - Gavin Barnes
Constable - Ben de Sausmarez
Pisani - Andrew Foster
Superintendent - Ian Challendar
Maria Feletti - Sue Shaw

CREW

Directed by Rob Buck and Roz Walls
Designed by Rob Buck
Stage Direction for Song by Carmel George

Harlequin: Eleanor Buck
Stage Manager: Paul Hucker
Assistant Stage Managers: Phil Matcham, Sue Shaw
Set Design by Rob Buck and Ian Challendar
Set Construction by Mark Hawksfield, Tim Hucker, Phil Matcham, Cassie Pike and members of the cast
Lighting by John Stickland
Sound by Paul Hucker
Props by Alison Brooks, Sue Shaw and Louise Melotte
Costumes by Erica Neustadt
Front of House by Linda Courtney, Erica Neustadt and Julia Ward
Publicity by Phil Matcham

PRODUCTION NOTES

Dario Fo is Italy's leading contemporary performer/playwright, renowned throughout the world for his dazzling radical satires.

He was born in 1926 and after an art school education and early career as a stage designer he began developing theatrical monologues for both stage and radio. By the Fifties he had become a successful stage actor along with his extremely talented wife Franca Rame.

The Virtuous Burglar (1958) is a one act farce from this period, only recently translated and published in English. It is a fine example of Fo's prolific ability to write texts which creatively rework some of the oldest themes in farce, in this instance that of mistaken identity.

Both socialists in their sympathies, Fo and Rame abandoned their blossoming stage career to search for a new audience thatw as not composed of middle class playgoers. In the Sixties they found that audience and were playing to huge crowds in new venues; circus tents, parking lots at factories or the cultural centres of the Italian Communist Party - they had become very much a part of the radical movements of the day.

Fo and Rame later abandoned the inflexible politics of the Communist Party and embarked on a programme of plays which critically examine social and political issues; often contentious and satirical, their themes include civil disobedience against inflationary prices (Can't Pay? Won't Pay! - 1974) and women's fate in society (Female Parts - 1986).

Accidental Death of an Anarchist (1971) is a sharp and hilarious satire on police corruption in Italy. Based on a true story, it concerns the case of 'anarchist' railway worker Giuseppe Pinelli who, it was claimed, 'fell' to his death from a fourth floor window of police headquarters in Milan in 1969.

Pinelli was said to have jumped out - past seven policement; the window was wide open - on a freezing midwinter night; he sustained an injury to the nape of his neck - during his fall; the alleged suicide took place five minutes after the police had called for an ambulance.

The play created understandable embarrassment and uproar when it was first performed in Italy and this new translation by Ed Emery faithfully retains Fo's scathing satire of the politics, judiciary and religion which form the unsteady cornerstones of Italian society.