REVIEW: Trumpets and Raspberries by Dario Fo at Baron’s Court Theatre 18 April – 6 May 2023

‘A complete farce, and not the one Fo intended’ ★

What a difference an interval makes. The play started well enough: the historical context of Dario Fo’s politically fraught 1970’s Italy was clearly established, where the main characters of the night were introduced along with the central plot contrivance of mistaken identity. Not the most scintillating, but not half-bad either. Then as the second half started everything went wrong, leaving us in the audience with a complete farce, and not the one Fo intended.

The mistaken identity at the heart of the play focuses around a foiled kidnapping of the man who used to control Italy’s motor industry, Giovanni Agnelli, when he’s left horribly disfigured by a terrorist attack and somewhat ineptly rescued by one of his factory workers, Antonio. Lying comatose in hospital after having been dumped at the nearest ambulance in Antonio’s red jacket, Agnelli is identified as Antonio by the latter’s spurned wife, Rosa, and his face is reconstructed to match while the police gradually set him up as the fall-guy for his own kidnapping.

Rich material indeed for both satire and comedy, neither of which materialized on the night. The second half, where all this setup was meant to pay off, was dominated by familiar devices like characters being bundled off-stage into seemingly locked rooms only to re-appear elsewhere or Agnelli/Antonio giving instructions to other characters only for his doppelganger to fall foul of them, etc., the sort of happenstance that should lend itself well to both dramatic and comedic moments. Should. Instead there was nothing but endless confusion and bungled landings as multiple characters came in and out of multiple doors, seemingly without rhyme or reason.

This wasn’t helped by the fact that the production was also literally falling apart. Some nights you get unlucky and a prop breaks. Other times, someone really hasn’t done their job and literally everything is broken: a walkie-talky got smashed just before a character was going to use it, a cabinet drawer hung off its hinges and a plot critical meat grinder simply refused to work and had to be admirably, but ineffectively, improvised by the poor actor left holding it. You’d almost begin to wonder if these disasters had been scripted, but even that would make small difference. It simply left the whole thing feeling shoddy, with all illusion of place and tension ruined.

Naturally the disconnect introduced by these sporadic disasters lead to severe disconnects with the narrative as well. I myself lost the run of things during the last half hour, and no one else from the audience I asked afterwards could seem to tell me what had happened during that time either; a possible flaw with the script, but impossible to diagnose when a production this poor was getting in the way.

And the true death knell here lies in the direction of an otherwise competent cast. The actors could each clearly perform, and I’d like to see them in other work to truly judge their acting chops, but on the night they all seemed to be performing in different productions. Some played camp and others played it straight, some went loud and some went quiet, in a fashion that failed to connect when the narrative needed it and ultimately led to most actors simply performing alone while surrounded by their co-stars.

And this neatly brings me to the little good I can say, which occurred in the more discrete scenes of the night. Rosa (Hannah Dormor) showed excellent comedic talent in her monologues, balancing the laughs at her character's expense with an earnestness that helped lend her important sympathy, particularly in her sparring with the Doctor (Ian Crosson) who matched her well as he showcased an artistically camp German accent. Naturally all this was contained in the first half of the night.

Because frankly nothing could save the second. The true hero of the night ended up being a lone woman trying to escape the theatre as the troubled climax began, only for her path to be blocked by a one of the actors squatting in a cardboard fridge. Most of the audience’s eyes were glued to her instead of whatever nonsense was proceeding onstage, watching as she pressed forward, hesitated, glanced back to her seat, unsure. The stakes were high and intimately relatable to us all. And then with a final flash of determination, she shouldered the fridge aside and escaped. The rest of us were not so lucky.

Trumpets and Raspberries showing in Baron’s Court Theatre, 18th April – 6th May 2023

Box office: https://www.baronscourttheatre.com/trumpets-and-raspberries-by-dario-fo

Written by Dario Fo and Franca Rame

Translated by Ed Emery

Directed by Gerrie Skeens

Produced by Dorota Krimmel – Wayward Theatre Productions

Reviewed by Harry Conway