Dario Fo Summary
Dario Fo

Italian playwright Dario Fo (born 1926) is known for his satirical and often controversial works. He was awarded the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature.Although he has been hailed by critics worldwide for... Read more

In the following, Fo discusses influences on his work in the theater. At the Rai Studios in Milan, Dario Fo is just finishing the editing of a series of shows to be aired in the Spring of 1978. We ... Read more

In the following essay, Wing maintains that the form of Accidental Death of an Anarchist reinforces its content. The provisional, ever-changing nature of the play, she argues, demonstrates that the &#... Read more

In the following essay, Cowan traces Fo's career and delineates the essential characteristics of his works. In Western Europe, where Brecht's plays have by now become standard fare fo... Read more

In this essay, Jenkins argues that "Fo has developed a modern style of epic performance that speaks to his audience with the immediacy of a newspaper editorial, shifts perspectives with the flu... Read more

In the essay below, Hood provides a broad survey of Fo's career. Dario Fo represents a tradition in Italian theatre that gave the world comic figures like Pulcinella and Arlecchino. The line... Read more

Mitchell offers a detailed examination of Mistero Buffo. This work, he declares, "and its many offshoots, together with the countless improvised routines and sketches on topical events which Fo... Read more

Critical Essay by Frank Rich The plays [which make up "Orgasmo Adulto Escapes from the Zoo"] are uncompromising in their convictions. And yet we sit … [in the theater] with the s... Read more

Critical Essay by John Simon I am not very fond of one-man plays. Or one-woman, one-trained-seal, one-anything plays…. Generally speaking, there is something demoralizing about going to theatr... Read more

Critical Essay by J. W. Lambert I went off to see Einer fur alle, alle fur einen … with no great hopes…. But Signor Fo, however dubious his political common-sense has been in the past, ... Read more

Critical Essay by Variety A play about inflation could hardly be more topical, and although it was written in 1974, Dario Fo's Italian farce, "We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!,... Read more

Critical Essay by Benedict Nightingale The rude view of Dario Fo is that he is, in the current jargon, an unabashed pill-coater. That is, he inveigles us into swallowing his radical nostra by plaster... Read more

[In the following essay, Jenkins analyzes Fo's "fusion of subversive politics and poetic slapstick."] The intellectual complexity and bacchanalian passions of Dario Fo's... Read more

[In the essay below, Emery analyzes Fo's Trumpets and Raspberries in relation to the use of masks, the nature of characters, the use of stock gags, and the representation of power as in the com... Read more

[In the following essay, Fo is viewed as a successor to earlier twentieth-century "Italian geniuses of the comic spirit" Totò and Eduardo De Filippo.] Clowns are grotesque bla... Read more

[In the following essay, Wing argues that, especially in his one-man skits, Fo causes the visible to become invisible, requiring the audience's participation to fill the gaps.] In demonstrat... Read more

[In a close examination of Fo's Trumpets and Raspberries and Almost by Chance a Woman: Elizabeth, Schechter argues for Fo's timeliness as a humorist and his identification as perhaps the... Read more

[Below, Schwartz identifies Fo as undeserving of the Nobel Prize because he has "dedicated his life to the promotion of everything discredited, despicable, and socially destructive in modern cu... Read more