If you had just survived an air crash, you wouldn't be particularly happy to then be informed by the pilot that he was entirely self-trained. That's exactly what Mario Pirovano does at the end of his performance of Dario Fo's monologue, which claims to offer an alternative take on the history of the European conquest of America.
After two and a half interminable hours, Pirovano craves a little more of our time to tell us how he made the transition from waiter to actor with Fo's company. It is a nice story and I am sure that Pirovano is a nice chap. He is certainly personable. But he is no actor - at least not in the English language. This is an evening spent listening to somebody talk through what sounds like a mouthful of marbles and watching him flap his arms like a seal.
Fo's story focuses on Johan Padan, a hapless, horny Italian whose astrologer girlfriend lets the side down when she fails to predict her own arrest by the Holy Inquisition. Fearful of the same fate, Padan escapes by sea. He stows away on one of Columbus's ships and ends up in the New World, where the natives rather take to him because he arrives completely naked and clutching a pig.
Full of tits-and-bum comedy (and that's not just the cannibalism), Fo's monologue, which was first produced in Italy 10 years ago and has not been performed here until now, is a bit of a carry-on in more ways than one. It has an overblown sense of its own self-importance and an almost complete lack of political insight about colonialism. It was not for nothing that Fo's hit play Accidental Death of an Anarchist was known among the cast and crew as Incidental Death of Analysis.
Pirovano just about gets by on sheer force of personality, and because he reflects the Everyman quality of Padan, the comic bit player in history. Fo, who also directs, does nothing at all to bolster his reputation.
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