Fo in translation

USM takes on the farcical We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!

By Gibson Fay-LeBlanc

Show info: We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! runs through May 5 at USM. Call (207) 780-5151.

ON THE CHEAP: Margherita (Megan Libby) and Antonia (Jessie Robinson) in USM’s We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay!

The title of Italian satirist Dario Fo’s 1997 Nobel Prize acceptance speech was “Contra Jogulatores Obloquentes” (Against Jesters Who Defame and Insult). He took the Latin title from a 1221 law declaring any violence committed against a jester perfectly legal. With this act, Fo linked himself with the medieval fool, pointing out the absurdity of those in control of society and the futile attempts of the rest of us to either challenge them or stay out of their way.

As with many of Fo’s plays, We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! was written in response to a particular Italian social movement he experienced. The play follows two working class couples’ humorous attempts to figure out their relationships, along with the society around them, in the 1970s. As it crumbles under the pressure of strikes, looting, and police searches, it becomes clear that some of Italy’s societal problems have been kept hidden too long.

From the opening moments of the USM production of We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! when the audience is told by way of introduction that “Art and politics do not mix” and “The characters in this play are communists,” you have the sense you are watching something different. Using the script of R.G. Davis, who translated and wrote the North American version of the farce, director Michael Rafkin, founder of The Mad Horse Theater Company, has challenged himself and his actors to do justice, American-style, to Fo’s physical and situational comedy, which is embedded in a caustic critique of Italian society.

As a practitioner of commedia delle arte, a kind of comedy for the masses perfected by a long line of Italian playwrights, Fo gives his audiences characters who work in factories and speak in local dialects. In Rafkin and Davis’ translation, that means that Antonia (Jessie Robinson), the wife of straight-laced union man Giovanni (Matt Cary), describes how he would “shit a brick” if he found out how she joined other women in taking food from the local grocery store in response to ridiculous price increases.

In a further translation, Rafkin describes in the program how he has cast Antonia as a kind of Lucy Ricardo type, always scheming and involving her friend Margherita (Megan Libby) in the ensuing trouble. Her husband Giovanni, on the other hand, is like Ralph Cramden, always complaining about his wife and all the ignorant people in the world to his best friend Luigi (Caleb Wilson).

The combination of personalities and melodramatic situations makes for some funny exchanges. When Antonia first explains to the dumbfounded Giovanni how Margherita got nine months pregnant in a week so she can avoid telling him about the rice and bread hidden under her friend’s shirt — and he believes her out of sheer ignorance about female biology — you can’t help but laugh. The same goes for Antonia’s explanations to a police lieutenant later in the play. He wants to check her and Margherita’s “bellies” for stolen goods, and instead listens to a story about the patron saint of pregnant women everywhere.

The play bogs down – the physical gags and the verbal shtick wear thin – in scenes with only two actors on stage. These moments don’t provide the same opportunities for the audience to see how misinformation between multiple characters snowballs and careens out of anyone’s control, the dramatic irony in which much of the humor lies.

At this point, you may have noticed that nothing’s been mentioned about Fo’s politics since the third paragraph. The genius of Dario Fo lies in his ability to be funny and provide biting social commentary at the same time. The problem is that much of the bite of We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! is lost in the translation to an American stage.

Though some of the reason for the lost satire comes from the general public’s ignorance of history, a problem Fo himself referred to in his Nobel speech, most of it lies in the incomplete change of context. Though R.G. Davis translates Italian working class dialects into American ones, the references to Italian society remain, leaving the audience feeling out of place. Despite the notes about communism in the program and in the introduction to the play, it is difficult to expect an audience in America, where communists are still largely reviled and ridiculed, to react the same way as an audience in Italy, where one third of the elected officials are communist. Even as someone who prides himself on being open to the political theories of Mr. Marx, I found myself thinking that the ending, with all four main characters singing The Internationale, was too didactic.

It is unfortunate USM’s production of We Won’t Pay! We Won’t Pay! doesn’t capture the sting of Fo’s farcical writing. The author’s satirical and political goals would be better served if the production was completely translated into a setting and situation that a somewhat cynical and very capitalist American audience could understand. It is easy to imagine Fo’s biting wit coming from the mouths of Wal-Mart shoppers who just heard about the latest closing of a local paper mill, or an Internet company moving to Asia.

Gibson Fay-LeBlanc can be reached at riverbetweenus@hotmail.com.