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A quick-witted fraudster known as the Maniac impersonates officials to expose police accounts of an anarchist's death in custody. By forcing the officers to reenact the interrogation and contradict themselves, he reveals the Superintendent's role in the fatal fall. The play presents alternative endings and leaves the audience to judge what should happen to the corrupt policemen.
A woman recounts how she married for love, fled her abusive husband, joined the Palestinian guerrilla movement, and took part in the assassination of a senior police officer.
A group of young Milanese men stage a fake marriage between their friend Lofty and a woman pretending to be an Albanian princess. In his attempt to obtain identity papers, Lofty is transformed into a dog and passes through a series of comic adventures before waking from the dream. The pinball image evokes mechanization and conspicuous consumption.
In a political farce about consumer backlash, Antonia and Giovanni confront soaring prices and rent, along with employers cutting jobs, wages, and benefits. Fo's original Italian text also challenges the Italian Communist Party's policy of asking workers to accept lower living standards for the national interest.
Two card sharps shoot a simpleton after he beats them at cards.
In Elizabeth I's boudoir, the aging queen awaits the Earl of Essex, who is involved in a coup attempt, while preparing for their meeting with the help of Dame Grosslady, a transvestite beautician who speaks mostly in grammelot. Fo's play breaks the fourth wall and includes improvisations that entered the published script.
An actor sentenced to death for performing a banned author's works is granted a final performance. He stages a satirical history of Christopher Columbus, depicting him as a shrewd but compromised figure navigating royal power and political advantage.
Venetian fugitive Johan Padan escapes the Inquisition by joining Columbus’s voyage, then survives a shipwreck by floating ashore on a pig. Rescued by Indigenous people, he joins a Caribbean community and uses surgery, horse training, and fireworks to help it resist Spanish colonization. Fo performs the one-man work through narration, mime, and invented sounds.
A 70-year-old former partisan nurse recalls confronting a politician at a rally in a village where fascists had killed partisans, then being arrested and tried. She recounts losing her husband and son in the war and declares herself the mother of the younger generation, urging them to resist fascism.
From a mental institution, the mother of Sicilian trade unionist Michele Lu Lanzone recounts his discovery of a spring in a drought-stricken region, the exploitation of local miners, and his murder by the Mafia.
A solo sequence of brief comic monologues draws on Biblical apocrypha and popular stories about Christ. Fo performs in Italian, regional dialects, and grammelot, a partly improvised language, following the tradition of medieval itinerant giullari.
A nude ambassador escapes discovery in a love affair by hiding in a road sweeper’s bin. A sweeper helps him recover his evening clothes, and the ambassador’s status makes the worker question the social hierarchy that treats him as less important in his own clothes.
A peasant tells how a landowner took the land he had cultivated and raped his wife. When he attempts to hang himself, Christ intervenes and gives him the power of a jester’s speech, turning his suffering into satire against the powerful.
A young goatherd fears women. A priest whose affair with a young woman her mother wants stopped arranges for the goatherd to marry her so he can continue the affair. Instead, the young couple fall in love.
An incorruptible magistrate investigates a cathedral arson, prompting powerful citizens to discredit him with the help of devils. A devil meant to possess him mistakenly enters his elderly housekeeper, transforming her into a striking woman; the magistrate is drawn into scandal, tried and acquitted, then condemned to galley slavery in a later trial.
A young Jesus discovers that he can perform miracles. When other children refuse to play with him, he breathes life into clay birds; he is also tempted to turn bullies into pillars of stone.
A husband persuades his suicidal wife that an open marriage is politically correct, then pursues younger women. When she decides to live independently and falls for another man, her husband becomes suicidal instead.
A paranoid, drug-addled pope fears that 100,000 orphans gathered in St. Peter’s Square are part of a condom-manufacturers’ plot to embarrass the Church. A witch disguised as a nun arrives as an aide to his doctor, and the pope develops a paralyzing affliction.
During China's Long March, a wounded revolutionary soldier is abandoned by his comrades and hides in a cave, expecting to die. A tigress and her cub find him; she nurses him back to health, and the play recounts their comic domestic life together.
A historical monologue turns a Bolognese revolt against papal authority into a scatological tale of popular resistance.
A burglar hiding in a clock is interrupted by a man and woman having an affair. Their confused phone calls and misunderstandings multiply when the burglar’s wife and the homeowner’s wife arrive, and another burglar eventually walks into the tangled scene.
When a failed kidnapping leaves Fiat head Gianni Agnelli disfigured, employee Antonio rescues him. Agnelli is taken to hospital wearing Antonio's jacket and mistakenly receives facial reconstruction in Antonio's likeness, setting off farcical confusion.
A quick-witted fraudster known as the Maniac impersonates officials to expose police accounts of an anarchist's death in custody. By forcing the officers to reenact the interrogation and contradict themselves, he reveals the Superintendent's role in the fatal fall. The play presents alternative endings and leaves the audience to judge what should happen to the corrupt policemen.
A woman recounts how she married for love, fled her abusive husband, joined the Palestinian guerrilla movement, and took part in the assassination of a senior police officer.
A group of young Milanese men stage a fake marriage between their friend Lofty and a woman pretending to be an Albanian princess. In his attempt to obtain identity papers, Lofty is transformed into a dog and passes through a series of comic adventures before waking from the dream. The pinball image evokes mechanization and conspicuous consumption.
In a political farce about consumer backlash, Antonia and Giovanni confront soaring prices and rent, along with employers cutting jobs, wages, and benefits. Fo's original Italian text also challenges the Italian Communist Party's policy of asking workers to accept lower living standards for the national interest.
Two card sharps shoot a simpleton after he beats them at cards.
In Elizabeth I's boudoir, the aging queen awaits the Earl of Essex, who is involved in a coup attempt, while preparing for their meeting with the help of Dame Grosslady, a transvestite beautician who speaks mostly in grammelot. Fo's play breaks the fourth wall and includes improvisations that entered the published script.
An actor sentenced to death for performing a banned author's works is granted a final performance. He stages a satirical history of Christopher Columbus, depicting him as a shrewd but compromised figure navigating royal power and political advantage.
Venetian fugitive Johan Padan escapes the Inquisition by joining Columbus’s voyage, then survives a shipwreck by floating ashore on a pig. Rescued by Indigenous people, he joins a Caribbean community and uses surgery, horse training, and fireworks to help it resist Spanish colonization. Fo performs the one-man work through narration, mime, and invented sounds.
A 70-year-old former partisan nurse recalls confronting a politician at a rally in a village where fascists had killed partisans, then being arrested and tried. She recounts losing her husband and son in the war and declares herself the mother of the younger generation, urging them to resist fascism.
From a mental institution, the mother of Sicilian trade unionist Michele Lu Lanzone recounts his discovery of a spring in a drought-stricken region, the exploitation of local miners, and his murder by the Mafia.
A solo sequence of brief comic monologues draws on Biblical apocrypha and popular stories about Christ. Fo performs in Italian, regional dialects, and grammelot, a partly improvised language, following the tradition of medieval itinerant giullari.
A nude ambassador escapes discovery in a love affair by hiding in a road sweeper’s bin. A sweeper helps him recover his evening clothes, and the ambassador’s status makes the worker question the social hierarchy that treats him as less important in his own clothes.
A peasant tells how a landowner took the land he had cultivated and raped his wife. When he attempts to hang himself, Christ intervenes and gives him the power of a jester’s speech, turning his suffering into satire against the powerful.
A young goatherd fears women. A priest whose affair with a young woman her mother wants stopped arranges for the goatherd to marry her so he can continue the affair. Instead, the young couple fall in love.
An incorruptible magistrate investigates a cathedral arson, prompting powerful citizens to discredit him with the help of devils. A devil meant to possess him mistakenly enters his elderly housekeeper, transforming her into a striking woman; the magistrate is drawn into scandal, tried and acquitted, then condemned to galley slavery in a later trial.
A young Jesus discovers that he can perform miracles. When other children refuse to play with him, he breathes life into clay birds; he is also tempted to turn bullies into pillars of stone.
A husband persuades his suicidal wife that an open marriage is politically correct, then pursues younger women. When she decides to live independently and falls for another man, her husband becomes suicidal instead.
A paranoid, drug-addled pope fears that 100,000 orphans gathered in St. Peter’s Square are part of a condom-manufacturers’ plot to embarrass the Church. A witch disguised as a nun arrives as an aide to his doctor, and the pope develops a paralyzing affliction.
During China's Long March, a wounded revolutionary soldier is abandoned by his comrades and hides in a cave, expecting to die. A tigress and her cub find him; she nurses him back to health, and the play recounts their comic domestic life together.
A historical monologue turns a Bolognese revolt against papal authority into a scatological tale of popular resistance.
A burglar hiding in a clock is interrupted by a man and woman having an affair. Their confused phone calls and misunderstandings multiply when the burglar’s wife and the homeowner’s wife arrive, and another burglar eventually walks into the tangled scene.
When a failed kidnapping leaves Fiat head Gianni Agnelli disfigured, employee Antonio rescues him. Agnelli is taken to hospital wearing Antonio's jacket and mistakenly receives facial reconstruction in Antonio's likeness, setting off farcical confusion.