Justin Butcher eases us into the madcap knockabout comedy of the pantomime season with a show by Dario Fo and a more restrained compilation of three plays by Chekhov.
Chekhov referred to his short play The Bear as Vaudevillian, while Dario Fo drew on the tradition of commedia dell'arte to have a gentle pop at class divisions and social norms in One Was Nude and One Wore Tails. They are light cartoons with a touch of music.
We wait ten minutes to find out who is nude. Before that time, refuse worker two (they don’t have names) says he feels worthless, to which refuse worker one points out that nothingness is “perhaps the beginning of everything, in other words, the absolute? And the absolute... is God, and therefore you are God”.
Their conversation is then interrupted by a stranger wanting refuse worker one to pretend to be accompanying her so she can avoid arrest by the vice squad. Refuse worker two helps out by taking his mate's bin back to the depot.
Unfortunately, when he returns to collect his own bin, he finds a naked ambassador hiding inside wearing a top hat having just escaped from a romantic encounter with a woman upon her husband’s return.
Mr ambassador doesn’t want to walk home naked, so he tries to persuade the refuse man to push him home in the bin. That soon mutates into the refuse man obtaining a grand suit from a flower seller that Mr ambassador might use, though for obscure reasons he wears it himself.
In “disguise” as an ambassador, he finds that a woman stranger wants him and the police treat him differently, bringing him to a better understanding of the way social worth is shaped by labels derived from appearance rather than reality.
The Dario Fo performance ends with the company performing the uplifting Italian resistance song “Bella ciao", which was based on a song by women workers and is associated with those fighting the occupation of Italy by German troops. Still sung worldwide as a celebration of resistance, it can be heard on many London demonstrations in support of Palestine.
The show is a fast, old-fashioned comic farce with at least one chase, several characters harmlessly hitting each other, a positive message of sorts and no naked people shown to the audience, so there’s no need to worry about taking your most nervous relative to see it.