©Nobby Clark ©Nobby Clark Photographer
"Very, very funny. A brilliant night of mayhem and hilarity, with a satirical thread running through it" is Janice Dempsey's thoughts on 'They Don't Pay? We Won't Pay!' by Dario Fo at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre until the 20th October.
Details
Venue: Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, Guildford
Upcoming Shows & Times:
- 19:45 - Wed 17 Oct 2018
- 14:30 - Thu 18 Oct 2018
- 19:45 - Thu 18 Oct 2018
- 20:00 - Fri 19 Oct 2018
- 14:30 - Sat 20 Oct 2018
- 20:00 - Sat 20 Oct 2018
Tickets: From £23
Deborah MacAndrew’s new version of Dario Fo’s 1974 play is seriously funny. In the spirit of Comedia dell’Arte, the Northern Broadsides Company present a brilliantly farcical story set in an industrial town whose people are beset by low wages, failing businesses, job-losses and high prices.
Anthea, a highly imaginative woman driven to the end of her tether by trying to make both ends meet, joins her neighbours in a rebellion in the local supermarket. In her attempts to hide the loot from Jack, her high-minded Unionist husband – and from the police – she enlists the help of her naïve young friend, Maggie, to smuggle out the food she has stolen. Jack takes a high moral stance when he hears about the looting, and the imaginative lies Anthea tells in her efforts to pull the wool over his eyes lead to more and more surreal episodes that have the audience rocking with laughter.
There are many moments when the “fourth wall” is torn and the actors step out of role to deliver asides and share jokes with the audience; others where they deliver a political point almost in self-parody, in monologue towards the auditorium. Wrapped in the ebullient humour of the play, the satire is the more potent and effective.
©Nobby Clark ©Nobby Clark Photographer
The cast is brilliant and dynamic, in the spirit of Dario Fo’s original co-operative founded in 1968. Lisa Howard is Anthea, strong-willed, full of terrible puns to share, trying to keep food in the cupboard and the utility bills paid.
Suzanne Ahmet is the gullible, gentle, easily-led Maggie, with a great voice and a capacity for open-mouthed surprise hastily covered by obedience to Anthea’s directions. Steve Huison and Matt O’Connor play the stereotypes of traditional husbands, not caring to know anything about “women’s matters” (or where the mop is kept) – and are easily fooled.
Michael Hugo plays everyone else and gets some of the biggest laughs of the evening, particularly as the unlikely Marxist police constable (“it’s lonely…”) and the more predictable capitalist police sergeant. Their discussions with Jack, who believes firmly in working-class values, Trade Unions and getting justice done through "the proper channels” lead to some memorable statements. (I enjoyed “Injustice is not against the law”).
In the course of the buffoonery and surreal humour, satirical comment on the social situation today is delivered: defences down, the audience takes in the characters’ profound discontent with the status quo. Dario Fo wrote the play in 1974 and rewrote it in 2008 to match the political crisis in Italy. Deborah McAndrew’s version is an update for our own times. Brexit, food banks, austerity, the National Health Service and even the Donald Trump blow-up baby get a mention, along with other political and social issues. It’s a seamless conversion.
When Dario Fo received the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997 it was because he had “emulated the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden”. This play maintains that citation, even while it provides an evening of laughter and fun. Whatever your politics, you will love it.
