How fortunate we are in the DC area, a locale that seeks status as a world class city, to have the Ambassador Theater in our midst. The Ambassador Theater has a mission to build international cultural awareness through a regular repertoire of under-produced plays from renowned playwrights. The programming often involves connections with cultural affairs representatives from other countries to bring shows to the stage.

Darren Marquardt (Giovanni) and Hanna Bondarewska (Antonia). Photo by Valentin Radev.

Ambassador Theater’s s current production, done in partnership with the Italian Cultural Institute, is Nobel Prize for Literature recipient Dario Fo’s They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! (1974). The production is an amusing farcical tale of working class heroes taking revenge on the establishment after being screwed over too long by those in power. It is payback they seek; and payback they take.

Fo’s They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! is guerilla political theater that draws upon the celebrated 16th century Italian carnival-like artistic style of Commedia Dell’arte and 20th century left-radical political perspectives about the solidarity of put-upon workers in their battle against the owner classes.

For those unfamiliar with playwright Fo; he received the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1997. He was cited as a writer, “who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden.”

Under the direction of Joe Martin and Danny Rovin, with a translation of the Italian text by Jon Laskin and Michael Aquilante, They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! Is a fun house for those who enjoy absurdist sketch-art, an improv sensibility and the frantic, uncontrolled inner workings of Commedia Dell’arte with stock-characters who wear an attitude of high-jinx like a mask. The frenetic comic style of They Don’t Pay, We Won’t Pay cleverly disguises the play’s sweeping intention of seriousness until at the final curtain, the capacity to unseat the powerful through worker camaraderie becomes clear.

Martin called the play an “underclass farce” that expands upon the large repertory of “overclass farces from Noel Coward, Oscar Wilde, et al.” In his director’s note, he further indicated that the spirit of the show is “topical for time and place of the production” as the translated dialogue includes references to current some situations in the United States.

The play is succinctly described by Ambassador Theater as: “Desperate housewives take justice in their own hands… inspired by real life events of workers’ uprising in 1974’s Italy.” The characters include housewife Antonia (a likeable, colorfully portrayed, high-energy, spinning-top Hanna Bondarewska). During unrest at a supermarket, Antonia appropriates food without paying; then tries to hide the stolen items from her more law-abiding husband Giovanni (Darren Marquardt with a comical presence and a befuddled reaction to the happenings surrounding him). Antonia’s hiding place for the shoplifted food is under a coat worn by her best friend Margherita (Moriah Whiteman as a droll second-banana, fully living her stage life in reaction to Bondarewska).

From this start, there is constant physical disorder and loud verbal commotion and the rage of people unable to pay their bills because the system is set against them. The chaos only expands when Giovanni and his friend and Margherita’s spouse Luigi (Mitch Irzinski as a “straight” presence for most of the production) are made to believe in miracle pregnancies and several levels of police investigate where the stolen food might be and who might have stolen it. Peter Orvetti plays two police characters as twin-like doppelgangers; one supporting the workers and looking the other way; the one with a fake mustache who pays a price for his anti-worker attitude. Even the Pope takes some verbal hits.

The design team that transformed the black box of the Mead Lab Flashpoint into an apt setting for Fo’s wit are up to the task even on what appears to be a small budget. The team includes Set Designer Rachael Knoblauch who built a small interior apartment space and with sleight of hand brings some scenes “outside” with the first-rate assistance of Lighting Designer E-hui Woo with her use of half-light and black outs that also evocate dream sequences. Noor Che’Ree’s music/sound design is effective with mood setting especially as the show nears its conclusion with a very recognizable century old anthem to solidarity.

Mitch Irzinski (Luigi), and Darren Marquardt (Giovanni). Photo by Valentin Radev.

Costumer Sigridur Johannesdottir provides the working-class characters with the clothes needed for audiences to realize who they are. Benjamin Cunis is credited as movement consultant for the feverish, if not breathless, pace of the production.

A big round of applause goes to Set/Artist Painter Julia Tasheva, who I must assume painted what is a fantastic work of visual art, the set curtain that the audience gazes at. The painted curtain is not unlike the 1930’s Ben Shan works, some may recall once hanging in DC federal building such as HHS and VOA.

For audiences who enjoy the broad comedy of Commedia Dell’arte, and for those who want a fix of left-leaning worker solidarity in those days before the current gig economy, then a visit to Ambassador Theater’s They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! will be a splendid treat.

Running Time: Two hours and 30 minutes. including one intermission.

They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! plays through March 26, 2016 at Ambassador Theater performing at The Mead Theatre Lab at Flashpoint – 916 G Street, NW, in Washington DC. For tickets, purchase them at the door, or online.

In politics, the expression “Marxist farce” could well be a slur hurled by some puerile and petulant presidential hopeful (you never know these days). In theater, however, the term “Marxist farce” has a reputable history and legitimate meaning as the name of a genre. It just doesn’t pop up much. In the economics of commercial theater, Marxist farce is a rare bird, and it’s no longer much seen in the U.S. indie theater scene either.

Peter Orvetti (Federal Agent), Hanna Bondarewska (Antonia), Darren Marquardt (Giovanni), Mitch Irzinski (Luigi), and Moriah Whiteman (Margherita). Photo by Valentin Radev. 

If you’re looking for one of these uncommon agit-tainments, you’d be hard pressed to find a more interesting and important example than Dario Fo’s They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! It’s the prolific Nobel Prize winner’s most produced play, written in 1974 and staged around the world since. Thanks to Ambassador Theater you can catch this classic work of working-class consciousness in a terrifically witty revival at Flashpoint.

In They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay!, Fo borrows farcical techniques from the Commedia Dell’Arte and boulevard theater of his native Italy as well as the Theatre of the Absurd. American audiences unfamiliar with these European traditions might more likely recognize echoes of Abbott and Costello, I Love Lucy, Martin and Lewis, and Jackie Gleason’s The Honeymooners. Indeed Fo’s two hilariously scheming housewives Antonia (Hanna Bondarewska) and Margherita (Moriah Whiteman) could be sisters to Lucy Ricardo and Ethel Mertz, and their two bombastic/bumbling husbands Giovanni (Darren Marquardt) and Luigi (Mitch Irzinski) could be doppelgangers for Ralph Kramden and Ed Norton.

Darren Marquardt as Giovanni and Hanna Bondarewska as Antonia, Photo by Valentin Radev.

The zany plot kicks off when consumer prices suddenly skyrocket and Antonia joins with other shoppers who are taking matters into their own hands by stealing food. Afraid her law-abiding husband Giovanni will find out, Antonia conceals some of the stolen food under her friend Margherita’s coat, with the result she looks  pregnant. The husbands’ bewilderment over this sudden fecundity makes for running gags aplenty. Meanwhile the law shows up in multiple guises (Peter Orvetti) intent on finding the incriminating food loot. The play is aimed squarely at a mass middle-of-the-road audience, cleverly constructed to keep ’em laughing all the way through to the very end, when Fo’s exhortation to build a mass movement of proletariat solidarity enters slyly if not subtlely, like a beneficent deus ex marxism.

Ambassador Theater is presenting the DC area premiere of a wonderful new-and-now translation by Jon Laskin and Michael Aquilante of Fo’s most recent rewrite (over the years he has continued updating it to keep pace with the dispiriting financial times), and it’s a real kick to listen to this adroit cast play it to the hilt.  Zippily directed by Joe Martin, the production relocates the play from Milan to Newark, and changes Italian corporation names to contemporary U.S. behemoths like Citibank and Verizon. Also interpolated are some apt references to “the previous Pope’s” edicts against contraception and recent police activity in Baltimore and Fergusson. The first act is a hoot; the second act lags a bit. I sensed Fo overwrote a stretch. A labored subplot heist by Giovanni and Luigi supplants the far more madcap momentum begun by Antonia and Margherita. But that’s a script quibble.

The Ambassador Theater’s enjoyable production of They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! smartly showcases a classic by one of world theater’s most influential political consciences.

Running Time: Two hours and 30 minutes, including one intermission.

They Don’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! plays through March 26, 2016 at Ambassador Theater performing at The Mead Theatre Lab at Flashpoint – 916 G Street, NW, in Washington DC. For tickets, purchase them at the door, or online.

SMARTPHONES

So might read a hasty text from a self-absorbed hipster about Smartphones, the ridiculously delightful farce now playing at Mead Lab Flashpoint. Presented by Ambassador Theater in a brisk and bracing production directed by Joe Banno, Smartphones is a hilarious comedy of bad manners about our era’s inner Narcissus, whose vain reflection now stares back from a handheld screen.

Spanish playwright Emilio Williams writes with tongue drolly in cheek, except when stuck out and blowing a raspberry. Two young married couples—Amelia and Barnaby, and Dagobert and Chantal—meet up in the home of their friend Fedé, who is absent but expected imminently. The husbands are friends from high school; the wives, from college. And in an endlessly silly meta-theatrical joke, their wait for Fedé echos Beckett’s Waiting for Godot (except now and then they receive “On my way” texts from him and follow his Facebook and Twitter feeds). Also skewering their self-referential, selfie-satisfied social world is a meta-joke hyperlinked to Sartre’s No Exit (except one or another will now and then run out to buy a bottle of booze).

Fedé’s cleaning lady, Marie (Ambassador Artistic Director and Founder Hanna Bondarewska, decked out in a latex maid’s getup and yellow rubber gloves), opens the show lip syncing an operatic aria and amusingly flouncing about and flirting with the audience seated round the stage. The stark, simple set (designed along with the flashy lighting by David Ghatan) features four leather swivel chairs, a black-upholstered table, and an anachronistic green plastic telephone perched upon a red pillar.

The couples enter and banter, and each spouse carries a constantly consulted smartphone. The landline rings auspiciously but they let it go—because “nobody answers their phone anymore.” Obsessed with their  wi-fi’ed online lives, at one point the two women text a convo in the dark, their faces lit solely by their smartphones. It’s one of googobs of clever bits. There’s also a running joke about “spotty coverage”—to which they all say “ewww!” Episodically they all spaz out in weird green light and loud static, as if in dreaded disconnection from a signal—meanwhile their disconnection from one another fazes them not at all.

So outrageously and hilariously shallow are the four of them that they speak earnestly about the benefits of outsourcing their children to China for adoption. “There are things in life that a horoscope can’t prepare you for,” one of them laments. Suddenly a text message comes in. Is it from Fedé? “Oh no, it was just my fridge. I’ve got an alert that we ran out of margarine.” Banno’s program note aptly characterizes Smartphones as “‘Keeping Up With the Kardashians,’ as if written by a blogging Oscar Wilde.”

Ariana Almajan brought a very funny Valley Girl inflection to Amelia. Moriah Whiteman played the ditz Chantal with incouciant fizz.

Shravan Amin (Dagobert) and Moriah Whiteman (Chantall), and Ariana Almajan (Amelia). Photo by Valentine Radev. 

And Shravan Amin gave Dagobert bumbling charm. Because Bruce Rauscher had become unable to perform as Barnaby, Tekle Ghebremeschel stepped in and played the role on book. I can attest he did well, and the last-minute substitution did not detract the slightest from my complete enjoyment.

Smartphones is one of the smartest, sharpest satires I’ve seen. It’s also one of the shortest—the subtitle’s “pocket-size” doesn’t lie. And in its refreshing brevity is the soul of its conspicuous wit.

YW.

Running Time: 55 minutes, with no intermission.

TICKETS ONLINE

Smartphones, A Pocket-Size Farce – produced by and Ambassador Theater in partnership with the Embassy of Spain and Spain arts and Culture, directed by Helen Hayes Award recipient Joe Banno – opens at The Mead Lab Flashpoint on October 22, 2015.

Doesn’t existence seem totally absurd at times and life too restrictive? Don’t we wish we were free of social norms and do as we like? Aren’t we our own worst enemies at times? Emilio Williams*, the author of Smartphones, asks the same questions yet as a dramatist has the opportunity to dream our dreams and nightmares on stage. In Smartphones, inspired by Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot, the avant-garde playwright takes his privilege to the absurdist limit. Mixing the Absurd, Ridiculous and the Surreal with a layer of ‘digital madness’, he brings human shadows and insecurities to light, making us reflect on life and to laugh, nervously at times, in the process.

Emilio Williams is a dramatist who uses his medium like a magnifying glass, bringing into focus complex aspects of our psyche challenged by today’s fast-paced existence. Just like his influences – Beckett, Ludlam, Moliere, and Bunuel, he is acutely aware of what is difficult, awkward and absurd in life and chooses to talk about it using humor, farce and parody. “Nothing is more radical than humor” says Williams, whose multi-dimensional plays combine laughter with existential themes and a pertinent social satire. Smartphones, his only play that takes part in one set, one room and in real time, is also a great example of Williams’ reaction against conventions of the Realistic Theater.

“Your comedies tend to be silly but not stupid” said William’s friend once, and the author liked the comment. In case of Smartphones silly and serious go together. After all the play is a tribute to and a parody of the Theatre of the Absurd, as well as an example of William’s avoidance of literalness of theater realism. Also, true to the Theater of the Ridiculous Manifesto and its canon of ‘the free person,’ Smartphones’ personas are free to act in a spontaneous and silly way whilst not compromising seriousness of the matter. “The free person, as distinct from an authoritarian phony or the civilized adult, is erotic, socially self-assertive, playful and imaginative” (Brecht: 117) and so are the play’s characters….TO READ MORE

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