Play lands jabs on politics

Accidental Death of an Anarchist makes laughter its policy statement.

By PETER SMITH

© St. Petersburg Times, published May 30, 2000

So are you one of those people who watches MSNBC and pretends it's the Comedy Central? Do you even dislike politicians you agree with? Well, there's hope (and a few laughs) for you over at Off Center Theater in Tampa's Tampa Bay Performing Arts Center.

If you understand that a raucously funny comedy can have the title Accidental Death of an Anarchist, there is definitely hope for you.

As presented by the Jobsite Theater, Anarchist is like being locked in a phone booth with the Marx Brothers, circa Duck Soup, (a movie that is good practice for this Dario Fo play) and a tank of nitrous oxide.

The wordplay is bombastic, wildly funny and yet only slightly removed from reality. As the character called "The Fool" leads on a number of comic opera police officers and a journalist -- equally uninterested in the truth, but only in printable scandal -- we are given the comforting distance of this being a play about Italian politics, not our own.

But those preposterous police uniforms look an awful lot like the White House guard uniforms Nixon dressed those poor slobs in back in the '70s. We'd like to think this play isn't about us, wouldn't we? But Fo and the Jobsite players offer us no such sanctuary. What can we do? Well, if we can't laugh, we can't do anything.

The only thing that power can't stand is to be laughed at. Which is why, the play suggests, we must do that very thing, even (or especially) if we agree with the powers that be. People who want power, we are reminded by this play, want it over us. If we give it to them, we might be the fools.

David M. Jenkins, a source or raw id on the hoof in Jobsite's recent True West, works the same premise here as The Fool. His direction gives him a bit more room to bluster than he actually needs; this play doesn't need to be this noisy and fast. There are barely moments to catch your breath, and the acoustics in the Off Center make people talking at the same time an ambient roar of human voices with little to separate them. But there is no denying the strength of Jenkins' performance and direction.

Michael Caban (also in True West and History of the Devil for Jobsite) is funny here as the police chief, a child dressed in his daddy's uniform. Jason Evans, as the first cop faced with The Fool, is a strong physical presence. Chris Holcom and Kevin Till are both strong physical comics. Sharon Chudnow, as The Reporter, is asked to do little besides be fetching, and this she pulls off with aplomb.

MSNBC. Comedy Central. If you can't tell the difference, or don't want to, this is an evening's theater for you.