Today, a favourite of mine. In these days of fake news and conspiracy theories Dario Fo poses the questions: ‘Will society ever be free of corrupt and incompetent politicians, the fascists and their false flag view of the world?’ Today is Groundhog Day, a day of repetition if you have seen the movie, but also when we apparently discover whether the current winter will last a further six weeks. Or to rephrase the question, whether our current lockdown will continue for that long. However it is also Candlemas when we remember Jesus being presented as a child in the Temple and being spoken of as a light to lighten all people. A welcome note of optimism on this dark and snowy morning.
THE ACCIDENTAL DEATH OF AN ANARCHIST is a play by Italian playwright Dario Fo that premiered in 1970. Considered a classic of 20th-century theatre, it has been performed across the world in more than forty countries. It is based on real-life events involving the Italian rail worker and anarchist, Giuseppe Pinelli, who died under mysterious circumstances while in police custody in 1969. Pinelli, accused of the notorious Piazza Fontana bombing, was cleared of the charges after his death. The events that led to Pinelli’s death have never been revealed. In its first two years of production in Italy, Dario Fo’s notorious Accidental Death of an Anarchist was seen by over half a million people.
On December 12, 1969, a bomb went off in the Banca dell’Agricoltura in Piazza Fontana, located in the center of Milan. 16 people were killed and another 90 were injured. An hour earlier, a bag of explosives had been found at a different bank in Milan, but it did not detonate; the police blew it up rather than disarming it, thus destroying a key piece of evidence. Nobody knows the full truth of what happened that day, but newspapers reported that anarchist groups were responsible. Giuseppe (Pino) Pinelli was one of the first anarchists to be taken in for questioning. He was detained for three days before “falling” out of a fourth-floor window to his death around midnight on December 15. Another anarchist, ballet dancer Pietro Valpreda, was put in jail for three years for his supposed complicity. Neither Pinelli nor Valpreda were actually involved in the attacks, nor, as far as we know, were any members of anarchist groups.
A madman invades a police station interrogation room where an anarchist accused of bombing a bank has recently “accidentally” fallen out of a window. Donning various disguises and voices, the madman manipulates policemen into a truth-inducing hysteria. ‘A marvellous concept: a zany political farce.’ (Michael Billington)
This version has been adapted by Gavin Richards from Gillian Hanna’s translation.
