FringeReview UK 2025
Mistero Buffo
Rhum + Clay
Genre: Comedic, Contemporary, European Theatre, Fringe Theatre, Mainstream Theatre, Political, Short Plays, Theatre
Venue: Pleasance Theatre, Caledonian Road
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Dario Fo’s and Franca Rame’s 1969 Mistero Buffo, a Rhum + Clay production performed by Nicholas Spooner and directed by Julian Pitt at the Pleasance Theatre till October 18. The Vatican have been taking of proscribing it ever since.
A thoroughly worthwhile revival, it still kicks and thrills in equal measure. Highly recommended.
Photo Credit: Luke Forsythe
Review
We’re interrupted by a young Deliveroo driver saying he doesn’t ask for tips but. He recalls a church and an orange tree and holds out oranges. Tastier than bread. An orange for the body of Christ. Welcome to Dario Fo’s and Franca Rame’s 1969 Mistero Buffo, a Rhum + Clay production performed by Nicholas Spooner and directed by Julian Pitt at the Pleasance Theatre till October 18. The Vatican have been taking of proscribing it ever since. Forget Dan Brown. The classic translation’s by Ed Emery and its subversive rage has never dimmed. In a production that’s been touring since 2018, it’s been subtly updated.
And this man receives a miracle. He’s a Jongleur, one of those who repeated Christ’s multiple stories and got burned at the stake for heresy, departing from the accepted fictions of the rich.
Except this man. The result of that miracle he’s now in the 21st century amongst the dispossessed and zero-hour Zoomers he’s a mix of an eternally blessed storyteller with a touch of the Flying Dutchman. He’s not cursed though. Though just occasionally his story might suggest differently.
Spooner’s updated preamble addresses a generation’s digital docking and clocking. The gig economy, cloud capital and techno-feudalism have brought back the very feudal structures preceding capitalism. Enslavement is even more assured and Fo, seeing the curve of it, speaks from beyond the grave.
Long ago in Judea a peasant who owns his land is told to give it to the lord of the valley; and others stand by as the lord and his men burn his mountain down. Eventually of course the lord comes to rape his wife who stops her husband. ” We have no honour” and ‘they want to kill you”. It doesn’t end well either way.
Fo’s premise is that the poor who have no ‘honour’… stripped of everything can indeed have something: truth telling, witness, class unity. And fight. Fo’s not for turning the other cheek. As the peasant prepares to die he’s stopped. After the miracle he can preach revolution in tongues.
The surrealist poet David Gascoyne wrote of ‘Christ of revolution and of poetry’. Referencing biblical stories we’re spun through the Slaughter of the Innocents with very contemporary resonance; that told straight here needs no underscoring. The woman who’s now convinced her slain son is a Lamb is full of Fo-like pathos and imagery.
There follows the Marriage at Canaa, the Raising of Lazarus with a resurrected man singing”Oh Jesus Christ” with a little revolutionary ardour.
But finally the Jongleur finds himself at the Crucifixion and having attempted something, delivers a homily and prophesy of his own on the future of Christianity. No wonder the Vatican got upset.
Spooner is both relatable and energetic. At the opening and sporadically later on he often interacts with those closest. It’s a Fringe energy and he mainlines it to general delight. Emery’s script with such minimal additions as “apps” has been minimally updated. He inhabits over 30 main characters inflecting voices and swivels of conversation with dizzying basso and falsetto alternating with his tenor. Maybe the number’s nearer 39, as it’s 39 Steps standard multiple-voicing where necessary and Spooner, chameleon in shape and sound smashes it.
There’s many repeats and litanies of key moments that see the Jongleur turn on a demented whim on the empty stage. The pack with oranges enjoys one apotheosis but otherwise it’s the excellent lighting that works as storyteller with Spooner. Suffused with smoke and a choral piece by Gorecki pulsing in and out of the sonance, it’s all that’s needed.
This is a piece that needs no adornment. Probably Fo’s repeats could be a little trimmed though they add to the Passion as it were. Just at the moment the Slaughter of the Innocents carries an extra charge. The questions generally about Christianity are still blistering. And that final prophesy turns more than Christianity upside down. Fo has made the link between Christianity, suffering and capitalist imperialism and declared one feeds the other. It’s a shocking and thrilling synthesis and declared why this is still as urgent a when it was written 56 years ago. A thoroughly worthwhile revival, it still kicks and thrills in equal measure. Highly recommended.
