Accidental Death of an Anarchist is set in the Milan, Italy police headquarters. A few weeks ago, an anarchist suspect, who was illegally detained under suspicion of carrying out a major bombing attack, conveniently fell out of the interrogation room window to his death. After getting himself arrested, the Maniac—a mysterious but dangerously unstable man with a talent for impersonations—manages to convince the police that he is actually the judge overseeing the investigation into the anarchist’s death. He forces the officers to reenact the anarchist’s interrogation, exposes the countless lies and inconsistencies in their story, and reveals their close links to the far-right militants who really carried out the bombing. The whole time, he mercilessly mocks the policemen’s corruption—although they are often too dim-witted to notice—and secretly tape-records all the evidence of their guilt. At the end of the play, he presents the audience with a fateful dilemma that forces them to ask what justice would look like in a thoroughly rotten government.
Act 1, Scene 1 begins with Inspector Bertozzo criticizing the playwright, Dario Fo, for his hatred of the police, then interrogating the Maniac about the accusation that he posed as a psychiatrist and charged steep fees to wealthy clients. The Maniac protests that he is perfectly qualified, thanks to his “twenty years of intensive training” in lunatic asylums, and argues that the university position listed on his business card cannot be taken literally because of the punctuation. He avoids getting handcuffed by dubiously quoting the penal code, which not even Bertozzo and his Constable seem to know. Then he starts running around like a dog, claiming to have rabies, and threatening to jump out the window, just like the anarchist. Bertozzo gives up, kicks the Maniac out of his office, and leaves for a meeting. But the Maniac returns. After tossing several petty criminals’ police files out the window, he answers a phone call from Inspector Pissani, who explains that Magistrate Malipiero from the High Court is coming to investigate the anarchist’s death. Imitating Bertozzo, the Maniac laughs and blows a raspberry into the phone, then hangs up and pulls a judge costume out of his bag of disguises. Bertozzo returns to kick the Maniac out of his office, and then Pissani comes by to punch Bertozzo in the face.
In Act 1, Scene 2, the Maniac meets Pissani, the police Superintendent, and a Second Constable in the interrogation room where the anarchist fell out the window. After talking nonsensically about how Pissani seems sexually repressed, he introduces himself as Magistrate Malipiero and exchanges a fascist salute with the Superintendent. The police claim that a sudden anxiety attack (or “raptus”) drove the anarchist to suicide, so the Maniac asks them to reenact the interrogation. (He plays the anarchist.) The officers admit that they don’t have any evidence—they just think the anarchist’s guilt is “self-evident.” They falsely insist that one of the anarchist’s associates admitted to the bombing. They also falsely claim to have disproved the anarchist’s alibi, then admit to the Maniac that they never even investigated it. Finally, they suggest that the anarchist admitted guilt by jumping out the window.
The Maniac blames the officers’ lies and omissions for causing the anarchist’s “raptus” and promises to punish them. The police hastily give him a new, corrected version of their statement—which claims that the interrogation ended four hours early—and complain that, as policemen, their job is just to follow orders and suppress “the subhuman filth” (like anarchists and communists). The Maniac declares the policemen’s careers over and tells them to consider jumping out the window, too, and Pissani nearly does. The officers continue their new statement, in which they claim to have comforted and sympathized with the anarchist. Mocking the policemen’s absurd, childish story, the Maniac forces them to sing an anarchist protest song with him.
The Second Act continues where the last one left off. The Maniac asks when the policemen started beating the anarchist, but Pissani claims that they never did—they just told the man jokes. The Maniac mocks him, explaining that this must be why he once heard screams coming from a police station: the suspects were laughing at the interrogators’ jokes. When he asks how the anarchist got up to the windowsill, the Constable claims to have grabbed the anarchist’s foot and pulled off his shoe. But the Maniac points out that the anarchist died with two shoes on and sarcastically asks if the anarchist had three feet. Frustrated, the policemen get into an argument, during which Pissani angrily blurts out that the Superintendent pushed the anarchist out the window.
The phone rings: the journalist Maria Feletti has come to interview the Superintendent about the case. The policemen decide that they want the Maniac present and ask him to disguise himself as Captain Piccini, a forensics detective. He agrees, and after Feletti arrives, he returns to the stage in a ridiculous pirate’s costume, including an eye patch and a wooden arm and leg. In her interview, Feletti points out that other prisoners complained about being dangled out the window, that someone called an ambulance to the police station five minutes before the anarchist fell out the window, and that the anarchist’s neck was covered with bruises. The Maniac proudly announces that the police beat the man on the neck, then called the ambulance after he stopped breathing.
Bertozzo arrives with a replica of the bomb from the attack. Realizing that the Maniac is not Captain Piccini, he repeatedly tries to alert the Superintendent and Pissani, but every time, they kick him and cover his mouth before Feletti can figure out what he’s trying to say. Feletti asks Bertozzo about the bomb, and he foolishly agrees that someone in the military probably made it. Feletti asks why the police only investigated the anarchists, and not the well-organized fascist militias. Further, she points out that of the ten anarchists in the cell they investigated, three were undercover policemen and one was a spy from a fascist group. She notes that fascists have been found responsible for almost all the recent terrorist attacks in Italy.
Bertozzo suddenly realizes who the Maniac really is, attacks him, and accuses him of having a fake glass eye and “a false, false leg.” The other officers don’t understand, so Bertozzo desperately takes them hostage and shows them the Maniac’s police file. Meanwhile, the Maniac lectures the audience about police repression and government’s corruption, using examples from the current political situation wherever the play is being performed. The other actors complain about him straying from the script (even though this is all in the script). The Maniac plays back his tape of Pissani admitting that the Superintendent murdered the anarchist, then takes off his disguise. Feletti recognizes him as a militant left-wing sportswriter, Paulo Davidovitch Gandolpho.
The Maniac pulls out Bertozzo’s replica bomb, which he has outfitted with a detonator, and makes Bertozzo handcuff himself to the window along with the other police officers. He explains that the bomb will explode in five minutes, then spends those five minutes in a detailed political debate with Feletti about whether violence is justified for the sake of a workers’ revolution. He gives her the keys to the policemen’s handcuffs, tells her to decide whether to free them or let them die, and then runs off to speak directly to the audience. Feletti leaves and the bomb explodes, killing the policemen. But then the Maniac reappears and tells the audience that they must see both endings. The scene resets, Feletti returns, and this time, she frees the policemen—who then handcuff her to the window instead, leaving her to die in the blast. “Whichever way it goes,” the Maniac tells the audience in conclusion, “you’ve got to decide.”
