Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in Accidental Death of an Anarchist, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
State Repression and Violence
Revolution vs. Reform
Theater, Truth, and Political Consciousness
Labor, Identity, and Humanity
Summary
Analysis
The Maniac, the Superintendent, Pissani, and the Constable finish singing. They briefly celebrate while the stage manager brings them coffee. Then the Maniac tells them to continue their reenactment from midnight. The men awkwardly set the scene. The Constable explains that all three of them were still present at the interrogation, which frustrates the other two men. The Maniac suggests that they must have eventually resorted to some kind of physical violence in the interrogation, but they deny it. To make his point, the Maniac gives the Constable a massage and then karate chops him. Pissani insists that they never broke the rules—in fact, he says, they interrogated the man “lightheartedly” and told him jokes. He performs some jokes for the audience.
The policemen’s cheery celebration shows how shortsighted and forgetful they are: they think that, just by singing along with the Maniac, they have won his favor—and freedom from accountability. They are foolish enough to think that the Maniac sincerely wants a more “lighthearted” story. They still have no idea that the Maniac is cynically mocking them, and they still cannot fathom that a judge would actually expect them to tell the truth about the anarchist’s death. On another note, Fo does not write Pissani’s jokes into the script. Rather, he leaves a space for his actors to come up with jokes that are relevant to their audience. This underlines Fo’s vision of theater as an art form that would engage audiences by adapting to the specific conditions of their lives.
Themes
The Maniac announces that these jokes explain everything. He recalls how, when he once stayed next to a police station on vacation, he heard constant thuds and screams from inside—but now he understands that the police were telling the suspects jokes, not beating them. He runs around, laughing and pretending to get beaten at the same time. The policemen join his mimicry, pretending to torture him. The Maniac declares that ordinary Italians must become anarchists just so that the police will arrest them and tell them jokes. Pissani finally realizes that the Maniac is mocking him and complains that the policemen deserve his sympathy—they even sang to prove they are “warm and human.”
Fo’s dark humor underlines how common police brutality was in postwar Italy. His audiences would have known all about it, or perhaps even suffered it personally. When Pissani finally realizes that the Maniac is mocking him, he feels genuinely offended. In a way, this makes sense: he joined the police to be corrupt, and corruption has always been the norm. Why, he may wonder, is this new magistrate suddenly changing the rules and punishing him for following orders? His commentary about needing to appear “warm and human” is quite telling: he never seems to think that he actually ought to be “warm and human,” only that acting the part should be enough to get him out of any consequences.
Themes
The Maniac promises “absolute seriousness from now on.” Noting that the window is too high for someone to reach without help, he asks how the anarchist managed to jump out it, and why the officers didn’t stop him. Pissani claims that the anarchist was too quick, and the Constable admits that he grabbed the man’s foot, but “his shoe just came off in my hand.” The Maniac praises this as foolproof evidence that the policemen tried to save the anarchist. The men get drinks and celebrate for a moment.
The Constable clearly thinks up this new detail on the spot, but the policemen are so foolish that they think the Maniac can’t tell that it’s a lie. Once again, they rejoice because they assume that they only need to come up with some plausible explanation for the anarchist’s death. This is because the state is deeply morally corrupt: in it, paperwork and authority matter above truth and morality. To the policemen, truth is simply whatever one’s boss is willing to accept.
Themes
But then the Maniac sarcastically asks if the anarchist had three feet. The Superintendent gets into a “boiling rage.” The Maniac points out that, according to the police report, the anarchist was wearing both shoes when he died. He demands an explanation. Pissani suggests that the anarchist was wearing another shoe inside the one that came off. The Superintendent calls this idea “deranged.” Pissani and the Constable suggest that the anarchist was wearing galoshes.
The Maniac challenges the policemen’s logic with the tone of “absolute seriousness” that he promised them. Philosophers call this strategy the reductio ad absurdum: he refutes the police’s story by showing that it leads to an obviously false conclusion. Astonishingly, while the Superintendent understands what the Maniac is doing, Pissani and the Constable don’t—and keep trying to patch their story with new lies.
Themes
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The Superintendent pulls out a cardboard box of the anarchist’s possessions, dumps them on the floor, and shows that there are no galoshes—just a single shoe, which he claims Pissani planted there after the anarchist’s death. After Pissani claims that the Superintendent ordered him to do it, they get into a shouting match, which ends with Pissani accusing the Superintendent of pushing the anarchist out the window. When they remember that the Maniac is there, they freeze.
As readers and audience members may or may not remember, the Maniac is secretly recording everything. Clearly, this is the moment he has been waiting for. The policemen foolishly let their tempers get the best of them, and for just one moment, the truth about the anarchist’s death finally comes out—even though everyone has known it all along.
Themes
The phone rings—it’s a journalist who has come to interview the Superintendent. The Superintendent asks if the Maniac can wait, but then he realizes that “the Professor’s quick thinking” would be helpful during the interview. The Constable proposes that the Maniac pretend he is someone else. The Maniac suggests a police psychiatrist, but the Superintendent proposes a forensics detective, Captain Piccini. The Maniac agrees but says he needs a disguise. He walks offstage, returns with his plastic bags, and then leaves the stage again to change.
By showing the policemen meet with a journalist, Fo reminds his audiences that press coverage is never neutral or complete—rather, the police often deliberately manipulate the press into publishing what they want the public to think. This was doubly true in the early 1970s, when Italian papers wouldn’t dare to blame the government for crimes that it clearly committed. The Maniac gets to take on yet another new persona, which will take this play’s pattern of infiltration and mistaken identity to new heights. Ironically, his jokes and insults seem to have convinced the policemen that he would be an asset to them—and that he is genuinely on their side.
Themes
The Constable brings Maria Feletti, the journalist, to the stage. The Superintendent introduces himself and Pissani, and they all sit down. Feletti politely accuses the police of “flagrant public white-washing,” and the Superintendent calmly says that Feletti’s paper publishes “rumour rather than fact.” Feletti pulls out a letter from an anarchist prisoner who says that Pissani made him sit on the windowsill during an interrogation and threatened to push him out. The Superintendent comments that a prisoner’s word is nothing compared to a policeman’s.
The Communist journalist Maria Feletti is the last major character to enter the play, but arguably the second most important after the Maniac. She represents the mainstream Italian left wing—and becomes the vehicle for Fo’s criticism of it. While she shares the Maniac’s general political goals and deep suspicion of the police, her methods are the opposite. She tries to expose the police’s lies through reason, debate, and evidence, while the Maniac communicates his message through play and sarcasm. Feletti’s questions are insightful and correct, but Fo will leave his audience to decide if they are effective.
Themes
The Maniac strides onstage in the guise of Captain Piccini, wearing an absurd costume complete with a crutch, eye patch, and wooden arm and leg. The others stare at him in disbelief as he briefly mentions battle wounds from Algeria and Vietnam, then he asks the audience not to smoke (which could cause a fire).
The Maniac’s latest disguise is even more ridiculous than his previous ones, and the policemen now have to convince Feletti to take him seriously. (Their bumbling attempts to do so will highlight their own stupidity.) The Maniac’s new disguise is clearly a pirate outfit, and it implies that there is little difference between the pillaging pirates of centuries past and modern soldiers, who simply loot and terrorize helpless people on behalf of the state. Indeed, the wars he claims to have fought in, Algeria and Vietnam, were both unsuccessful attempts by European empires to stop subjugated, colonized people from gaining independence.
Themes
The interview continues. Feletti asks why someone called an ambulance to the police station at 11:58 when the anarchist didn’t fall out the window until 12:03. Pissani and the Superintendent say this was just a precaution, and the clock was wrong. The Maniac agrees: unlike the Swiss, Italians all set their clocks differently. The Superintendent slaps the Maniac on the back to thank him, but the Maniac warns that his glass eye might fall out.
Feletti points out another obvious discrepancy in the policemen’s account, and they respond with another ridiculous excuse. Her implication is clear: the police tortured the anarchist to death, then threw his body out the window to cover up the murder. Meanwhile, the Maniac’s ridiculous behavior continues to expose the police’s corruption and incompetence, but now in a different way. In the first act, he outsmarted the police despite being a lunatic, which showed that the police are gullible. But now that Pissani and the Superintendent have sworn to treat him as their colleague, his absurd behavior reflects directly on the police—and he can easily pass incriminating information straight to Feletti.
Themes
Feletti asks why nobody analyzed “the parabola of the fall,” and Pissani and the Superintendent reply, “Parabola?” The Maniac says it’s a “beautiful word.” Feletti explains that parabola analysis would show if the anarchist jumped out the window alive or fell out when already unconscious.
Any modern middle-school student knows what a parabola is, but Pissani and the Superintendent are so ignorant that they seem to have never heard the word (not to mention realized it would be possible to measure the anarchist’s fall). Perhaps the Maniac doesn’t know it either, or perhaps he’s just mocking them.
Themes
Next, Feletti asks why the anarchist had bruises on his neck. The Maniac confidently explains: the police hit the man hard on the neck—16 times—and he stopped breathing. Then they called an ambulance and brought the man to the window for fresh air—but he slipped out of their hands. Pissani and the Superintendent rejoice at the Maniac’s “brilliant” story; the Superintendent slaps him on the back again, and his glass eye falls out. The policemen crawl around the stage to look for it. Feletti thanks the Maniac for the explanation and also suggests that it explains why the first judge ruled the death “accidental,” instead of a suicide.
Feletti continues pointing out obvious discrepancies in the police’s story, and Fo uses her questions to educate his audience about the facts of the case. Meanwhile, the Maniac takes the opportunity to further incriminate the police—even though Pissani and the Superintendent are too dimwitted to realize what he is doing. (He admits that the police tortured the anarchist, but they still call him “brilliant” because they think that his story will exonerate them.)
Themes
Bertozzo bursts into the office. He is wearing an eye patch and carrying a metal box, which he explains is a replica of the bomb from the attack at the Agricultural Bank. Just as the Superintendent asks Bertozzo to leave it on his desk, Pissani announces that he found the Maniac’s glass eye. But Bertozzo steps on the eye, slips and falls, and throws the bomb into the air. Everyone screams—except the Maniac, who calmly catches the bomb and tosses it to Bertozzo. “There’s no detonator,” Bertozzo assures the others. Pissani returns the glass eye to the Maniac, who asks the Constable to bring water to wash it.
The audience will probably get a good laugh out of the police nearly bombing themselves. This is also a metaphor for Fo’s view of the broader political context surrounding the play: the Italian state was waging war on its own people to try and reestablish a fascist regime. Notably, when the Maniac calmly catches the bomb, this shows that he knows it lacks a detonator. All these elements foreshadow the end of the play, when the plot will suddenly revolve around the bomb once again.
Themes
Bertozzo says that the Maniac looks familiar, but the Maniac suggests that it’s just because they’re both wearing eye patches. The Superintendent introduces the Maniac as Captain Piccini, even though Bertozzo knows the real Piccini. Pissani kicks Bertozzo, who demands to know why Pissani attacked him earlier. Pissani mentions “the insults and the raspberry,” but Bertozzo doesn’t know what he means. Angrily insisting that “we have visitors,” the Superintendent kicks Bertozzo, too. The Superintendent insistently repeats that the Maniac is Captain Piccini, then he introduces Bertozzo to Feletti. Bertozzo is furious, but Pissani whispers in his ear that they will explain everything to him later.
Bertozzo is wearing an eye patch because Pissani punched him in the face after the Maniac’s phone call. Here, Bertozzo becomes a foil for the Maniac, whose eye patch seemed like an unfathomably ridiculous accessory for a police officer—until Bertozzo arrived with his own, proving fact stranger than fiction. From this point onward, Bertozzo becomes the butt of most of the play’s jokes, since he is the only policeman who doesn’t know that the Maniac is actually supposed to be Magistrate Malipiero in disguise. At the same time, Bertozzo also becomes a kind of voice of reason, since he sees through the Maniac’s performance and calls out its absurdity—something nobody else is willing to do.
Themes
Meanwhile, the Constable brings the Maniac his glass of water. The Maniac drops the eye inside and washes it—but then, instead of popping it back in, he swallows it instead. Nobody else seems to notice.
The Maniac swallowing his eye may be a deep commentary on the nature of reality and vision, but more likely, it is just a silly joke. It elevates the play’s sense of dramatic irony by showing the audience that the Maniac is still unstable and highlighting how oblivious the policemen are to the world around them.
Themes
The Superintendent tells Feletti that Bertozzo is the department’s explosives expert. Feletti asks Bertozzo if the replica can help the police understand who made the bomb, but he says that the necessary information usually gets destroyed when a bomb goes off. She notes that the police recently found an unexploded bomb at a bank, but exploded it rather than disarming and studying it. Bertozzo, Pissani, and the Superintendent flinch at the accusation.
Once again, the police talk themselves into a corner: Feletti and Bertozzo’s conversation clearly suggests that the police are responsible for staging the bombing. If the police really wanted to catch the bomber, they would have studied the bomb rather than destroying it. And Bertozzo would have had to know the bomb’s design in order to accurately replicate it. Thus, it certainly seems that the police carried out the bombing with the intention of framing left-wing activists for it, then destroyed the bank bomb in order to hide the evidence of their own involvement.
Themes
The Maniac confidently walks over to the bomb, picks it up, takes off its lid, and points to the tangle of wires inside. He says that dismantling such a complicated device is too dangerous—it could go off at any time. Everyone is convinced. The other officers urge Bertozzo to comment. He adds that the bomb was so complex that only a professional could have made it. Feletti suggests that someone from the military could have made it, and Bertozzo agrees. (Pissani and the Superintendent start kicking him again.)
Some audience members might wonder where the Maniac finds the confidence to blindly plunge his hand inside a bomb—especially at the same time as he explains how complicated, unpredictable, and dangerous it is. (He is either totally oblivious to this irony, taking a calculated risk, or far more informed about the bomb than he seems to be.) With his comment about the military, Bertozzo accidentally confirms what left-wing Italians everywhere already suspect: the bombing is probably an inside job by someone with connections to the government.
Themes
Feletti asks why the police chose to investigate a ragtag band of anarchists, instead of the military. Bertozzo insists that the anarchist group was highly organized, but Feletti points out that, of the ten members, three were police spies and one was a “notorious fascist” in disguise. The Superintendent and Pissani defend informants as a valuable resource to the police, even though they couldn’t stop the bombings. The men claim that the “notorious fascist” doesn’t work for the police, but Feletti pulls out photographs of the man visiting the national police headquarters.
The police weren’t just covering up the anarchist’s death, but also the bombing itself. Feletti’s evidence shows that the police were working together with far-right activists to stage the bombing and pin it on the left, presumably as an excuse to crack down on them. Fo and his allies were already convinced of this in 1970, and real-life investigations would confirm it several years later. This is the point in the play where 21st century audiences may realize for the first time that this play isn’t really about an isolated instance of police brutality. Instead, it’s really about a dirty war waged by factions within the Italian state for years against the left.
Themes
The Maniac compliments Feletti’s questioning and shakes her hand. But his wooden hand falls off in the process. “Keep it,” he tells her as he puts on a new wooden hand, a women’s hand with painted nails that he calls “unisex.” Meanwhile, Bertozzo keeps insisting that the Maniac isn’t the real Piccini, and Pissani and the Superintendent keep stomping on Bertozzo’s feet to shut him up. Feletti throws the Maniac’s first wooden hand over her shoulder and into a filing cabinet—which the Constable promptly closes on his own fingers. Unaware of the irony of his words, the Superintendent declares, “This woman is getting out of hand.”
Fo again juxtaposes serious political commentary (the previous section) with a series of lighthearted jokes—this time, all referencing hands. The Maniac seems to be running low on disguises, and yet Bertozzo still hasn’t figured out who he is. When the Maniac’s hand falls in the filing cabinet, this may be a metaphor for his successful infiltration of the police department (and disposal of many important files, which the police still haven’t noticed are missing). Meanwhile, the ever-incompetent Constable manages to mess up the most basic of all his duties by smashing his fingers in the same filing cabinet.
Themes
Feletti stubbornly points out that fascist militants have been proven responsible for 102 recent attacks in the last year, and strong evidence links them to most of the 71 unsolved attacks, too. (The Superintendent accuses her of exaggerating, but he doesn’t know the real numbers.) These attacks were clearly designed “to point suspicion to the left,” Feletti continues. The Maniac provocatively asks if she means that the police should focus on investigating the well-funded fascist paramilitaries that are active throughout Italy and even investigating their links to the government.
Feletti offers more irrefutable evidence that the bombing and the anarchist’s death are not isolated incidents, but rather part of an ongoing campaign of state terrorism. The Superintendent’s lackluster reaction seems to confirm this: he has no serious rebuttal and doesn’t even know the real numbers, which is further proof of the police force’s incompetence. The Maniac asks about Feletti’s sources in the same sarcastic tone that he always uses to mock the policemen, but it will soon become clear that he is not mocking her at all—rather, he’s pointing out how obvious her conclusions are.
Themes
Bertozzo and the Superintendent cringe throughout the Maniac’s speech. Bertozzo circles the Maniac repeatedly, then he notices his own coat and hat on the coat stand and realizes who the Maniac really is. He screams, “It’s him!! It’s that fucking maniac!” The Superintendent, the Constable, and Pissani jump on Bertozzo to shut him up. All the while, the Maniac goes on. He declares that, even if Feletti exposes a scandal at the police department, at most a few bureaucrats will lose their jobs. But the real scandal is that the whole state is complicit: “corruption [isn’t] the exception to the rule. […] Corruption is the rule.”
After sticking to sarcasm and provocation throughout the whole play, the Maniac finally starts to give a genuinely impassioned speech and reveal his true political colors. He offers the unsettling conclusion that the police’s campaign of repression is not just the work of a few rogue actors, but rather a central part of the state’s very purpose: enabling, protecting, and profiting from corruption. To the Maniac, the government is just a gang that happened to seize control of society; they talk about democracy and justice in order to prevent others from taking over, but they are really willing to do anything to protect their power. While the policemen realize that the Maniac may not be entirely on their side, they still don’t understand him fully enough to process Bertozzo’s warning. Rather, they assume that Bertozzo has merely identified him as Professor Malipiero—and so is about to blow his cover to Feletti.
Themes
Bertozzo lunges at the Maniac, pulls off his eye patch, and triumphantly shows everyone else that he has two eyes. Nobody is impressed. The Maniac claims to wear the eye patch “for amusement.” Pissani and the Superintendent laugh, then wrestle Bertozzo down to the ground and chase him offstage.
Bertozzo’s attempt to unmask the Maniac backfires because Pissani and the Superintendent already know that the Maniac is in disguise. Bertozzo ends up looking like a paranoid fool, even though he is desperately trying to save the other officers from their own poor judgment. Of course, this is far from the first time in this play that the fool has proven the wisest character of all.
Themes
The Maniac continues his speech: the newspapers fail the people by giving them scandal instead of truth, and reform instead of revolution. Feletti asks the Maniac if he’s asking her to join the police’s cover-up; he tells her to “expose away,” but show that just the police aren’t wicked—the whole government is. (Pissani and the Superintendent chase Bertozzo across the stage, then off the other side.) The Maniac blames corruption on capitalism, which depends on one class exploiting another, and tells Feletti to challenge the state itself instead of just giving it “a ready-made chance to simply improve its window-dressing.”
The Maniac challenges Feletti—and the liberal political principles that she represents—by suggesting that a free press and civil society are not enough to create a better system of government. When journalists and reformers expose corruption, he suggests, they don’t contribute to true systemic change; rather, they just give the government a chance to adapt its “window-dressing” and rotate out one group of corrupt officials for another. He implies that the real solution is a revolution—presumably a communist workers’ revolution—which would actually change the structure of society and the government.
Themes
Confused, Feletti asks who the Maniac really is. Bertozzo runs back onstage to say that the Maniac’s leg is fake. Pissani and the Superintendent say that of course the wooden leg is fake, but Bertozzo says “it’s a false, false leg.” The Superintendent apologizes to Feletti for Bertozzo’s “mordant epilepsy,” and then Bertozzo seizes the Constable’s gun and tells the other police to stand in a line at the front of the stage, against the imaginary fourth wall. (He apologizes to the audience.) He orders Feletti to handcuff the other three officers to the window, and she does.
Pissani and the Superintendent continue to disparage Bertozzo, who also happens to be the only police officer who actually understands what is going on. It's fitting that the play’s most literal fourth wall joke, which challenges the division between reality and fiction, comes right at the moment when all its established patterns and power dynamics start to fall apart. It’s no longer clear who is whom, who is in charge, or who is on which side. Indeed, Bertozzo’s apology to the audience creates the impression that the hostage situation is unplanned or might even be real, with one actor holding the others hostage over some grudge.
Themes
Bertozzo once again tells the Maniac to reveal his true identity. The other officers try to stop Bertozzo, but he pulls the medical records out of the Maniac’s bag instead and gives them to the Superintendent. The Maniac plays with the bomb and complains that, instead of a revolution, European workers got corrupt governments and false promises of democracy. As they go through the papers, the Superintendent and Pissani finally realize that Professor Malipiero is actually a lunatic who escaped from an asylum.
Bertozzo finally gets through to the other officers. Tellingly, they only accept the Maniac’s identity once they read it in a police file—no matter how much madness they see right in front of them, they will never trust their eyes and ears above what’s written on paper. And the audience will soon uncover yet another layer of irony and deception: the Maniac is not actually who his file portrays him to be at all.
Themes
The Maniac starts denouncing the Watergate scandal, the UK government’s cover-up of Soviet spy Anthony Blunt’s confession, and its leniency toward businessmen who violate sanctions against Rhodesia. The Superintendent and Pissani call out the actor playing the Maniac by name and tell him to stick to Dario Fo’s original script. Feletti demands to know why Fo only wrote one female character into the play.
This play was originally performed in Italy in 1970, but this section has been rewritten to focus on political scandals in the U.S. and U.K. in the late 1970s. This isn’t an error or a violation of Fo’s intent as a playwright—rather, Fo wanted actors and directors to adapt his play to their contemporary time and place. This was his way of reminding audiences that state violence and corruption always continue under capitalism, and ordinary people must always fight them in order to create a just society. So while the other actors call attention to the Maniac breaking the fourth wall, this is exactly the point: the play is supposed to be relevant to the audience and their political reality, no matter when and where they are watching. This LitChart is based on the 1980 U.K. edition of the play, but other editions will replace this passage with more relevant examples.
Themes
Pissani and the Superintendent say they can hardly believe the Maniac’s true identity. Then the Maniac pulls the tape recorder out of his bag and switches it on. It plays back the audio of Pissani admitting that the Superintendent pushed the anarchist out the window. The Maniac explains that he has recorded everything, then takes off his disguise. Feletti recognizes him as Paulo Davidovitch Gandolpho, a far-left agitator and sportswriter.
The tape recorder only appeared briefly at the beginning of the second scene, so Maniac is likely to surprise the audience by pulling it out here. Needless to say, he also surprises the policemen, since it means that the evidence of their crimes will go public. Next, Feletti’s revelation adds yet another layer of mystery to the Maniac’s identity—it turns out that he was never really a madman, but just a clever activist with a knack for acting. In fact, Gandolpho may be just another of his personas, too. This is the ruse at the heart of the play: the Maniac’s true identity is unknowable. In fact, he could be any of the millions of Italians who were secretly fighting alongside Fo for a workers’ revolution.
Themes
The Superintendent tells Bertozzo to shoot the Maniac, but before he can, the Maniac pulls out the bomb. The Superintendent remembers that there’s no detonator, but Bertozzo sees that the Maniac has added one. At the Maniac’s orders, Bertozzo puts down the gun, joins the other policemen by the window, and handcuffs himself to it. The Maniac explains that he plans to distribute hundreds of copies of his tape all around Italy. He gets the handcuff keys from Feletti and explains that the bomb will go off in five minutes.
The Maniac’s bag of tricks saves him once again, and the tables turn once more. The Maniac’s true motives finally become clear—he wants to expose the truth about the anarchist’s death in a way that journalists like Feletti never can. Ironically, he holds the police hostage with a bomb of their own making. But there’s an even deeper irony here, too: Fo has used this play to accuse fascists and the government of carrying out the Piazza Fontana bombing, in part based on the assumption that anarchists and left-wingers would not carry out such an attack. But the play actually ends with a left-wing activist carrying out a bombing! While Fo is by no means suggesting that anarchists actually carried out the bombing, he does appear to be poking fun at fellow left-wingers who think their side can do no wrong and would never use violence.
Themes
Feletti protests that the Maniac can’t simply murder people in service of his political goals, but the Maniac says that the policemen have done exactly the same thing. She says that ultra-leftists like him hate democracy, but he says that journalists like her just publish “reformist illusions” on behalf of capitalists. After all, he continues, capitalist countries like Italy only pretend to be democracies, until the people really win power and the ruling classes set up an authoritarian system. This is what happened in Chile, with Augusto Pinochet’s coup d’état against Salvador Allende in 1973. Feletti disagrees; while she and the Maniac debate what the coup in Chile means for left-wing politics, the policemen complain that they only have a couple minutes left before the bomb goes off.
Like his speech about Watergate and Rhodesia, the Maniac’s debate with Feletti about Chile was added to a later edition of the play (following Fo’s wishes for the play to be adapted). Newer editions might as well mention COVID-19 or the 2008 financial crisis. Yet the coup in Chile is actually a fantastic example of the debate between Feletti and the Maniac—as well as a clear indicator of Fo’s broader political goals. In short, after Chileans elected the socialist Salvador Allende as president in 1973, the general Augusto Pinochet immediately overthrew his government with the help of the U.S. to set up an authoritarian capitalist system instead. While Feletti thinks that electoral democracies can lead to equal, just societies (because people will gradually redistribute power and resources), the Maniac thinks that capitalists will inevitably step in to shut down democracy whenever it tries to pursue redistribution (like it did in Chile). To the Maniac, contemporary capitalist countries pay lip service to democracy and the rule of law, but it’s all an illusion: their real purpose is to protect capitalists and help them exploit ordinary people’s labor. Fo clearly wants his audience to consider this dilemma, but by showing Feletti and the Maniac get into a tactical debate while the bomb clock counts down, he is also simply mocking left-wing activists’ tendency to quarrel and divide themselves over minor ideological details.
Themes
Feletti stands in front of the door, says that she won’t let the Maniac go through with his plan, and threatens to publicly expose him. He says that she can do so if she wants; he gives her the handcuff keys and leaves. As the policemen beg for mercy, the Maniac briefly reappears and tells the audience that Feletti has to decide. She does: she runs out the door. There is an explosion, and the lights go out. The Maniac calls it “a happy ending!” and leaves.
The Maniac gives Feletti the final say over what to do with the police officers. If they die, it will be her fault; but if she lets them go and they end up getting away with the anarchist’s death or even killing more innocent people, then it will be her fault, too. In reality, Feletti is a stand-in for the audience, and her dilemma is really Fo’s way of presenting a dilemma to the audience: reform or revolution? Is it enough to fight for change within the political system, or does the political system itself need to be changed? While Fo is by no means asking his audience to take up arms against the government, this “happy ending” suggests his view that sometimes the left should be willing to use violence—especially since the right is always willing to do the same.
Themes
But the Maniac doesn’t really exit. Instead, he returns to tell the audience that critics will hate it if “the ultra-left hooligan win[s].” He explains that Feletti will now perform the other version of the ending. The lights come back on, and the policemen are again locked to the window, with seconds before the bomb explodes. Feletti runs to them and unlocks their handcuffs; they thank her and run to the door. But then they remember that Feletti “knows everything!” They return and lock her to the window, then they run offstage, laughing. She curses them and yells out for help. The Maniac tells the audience that “Whichever way it goes, you see, you’ve got to decide”—and he bids them goodnight.
With this conclusion, as throughout the play, Fo cleverly plays both sides of a joke—he makes his point and mocks himself at the same time. On the one hand, the Maniac insists that Fo must show both endings, so as to seem neutral between reform and revolution (and not anger the critics or government). But on the other, the outcome of each scene clearly suggests that communist revolution is the solution and reform is a lie. Specifically, Fo argues that Italians must replace their government with a new one, run by workers, if they want to build a truly just and equal society. By showing the policemen leave Feletti for dead, he warns that the capitalist state is perfectly willing to use violence against anyone who challenges it. So while he makes it clear where he stands on the dilemma of reform or revolution, he ends by asking his audience “to decide” where they stand, and what they are and are not willing to do in order to create a better world.
Themes
