Mistero Buffo | Rhum & Clay
The old archetypes of the Fool and the foolish are threshed out and made fresh in this fantastical satire presented by Rhum and Clay. I had done a little reading in advance but I was unprepared for the sheer force of personality and the wildly physical performance from Julian Spooner. It’s a firecracker of a show.
It is a play with a long history and many previous conceptions and performances. The way-back original on which this was based, Mystery-Bouffe, was written by Vladimir Mayakovsky, a poet of Russian, Georgian and Ukrainian descent, who was an early creative in the Russian Futurist movement which rejected tradition and welcomed revolution and social change. The original Mystery-Bouffe, meaning a medieval comic-opera, was presented to various outrage and censorship and the Mayakovsky was quoted wishing that "in the future, all persons performing, presenting, reading or publishing Mystery-Bouffe should change the content, making it contemporary, immediate, up-to-the-minute.”
And so it has been with Dario Fo’s play Mistero Buffo, and Ed Emery’s translation, and this here contemporary staging from Rhum & Clay which twists this play and concept even further, pushing it right into the present day with political references merely months and barely years old, with contemporary slang, politicians you might recognise and of course, the Jongleur himself, who is a humble food delivery worker by day, and arrives on stage with his insulated food delivery bag on his back.
Brave, indeed, to attempt a play that has been created, recreated anew, re-enacted, banned, rejuvenated, translated, translated again, done in ha-penny theatres and in royal festivals the world over. Versions of the play have been viewed by 40 million people in 30 different languages. And full respect to the performer and company for giving it wings. We bring back an old play for one of two reasons – to honour it, or to subvert it. This one fell on the side of praise but done with finesse and panache.
It's a radical left-wing manifesto and a reclamation of the true intent of bible stories, for the people bible stories were supposed to serve. It's a ridiculous comedy, and also a didactic sermon on how the beatific is subverted by the powerful to suit their own ends. It’s a play that lies in the gutter and laughs at the boot holding us down.
“You should deflate him with the sharpness of your tongue, and drain him of all his poison and his stinking bile.”
It mocks the rich, and strips the Emperor of his robes. It mocks the powerful, and shows them how precarious their thrones. It mocks the mouth-breathers in the peanut gallery while it simultaneously salutes them, and argues for their very right to inanity. In the end, we are allowed to experience whatever we like however we like. Who are we to judge if some wish to queue for ten miles to see a box? Come witness the miracle brothers, and take of it what you will.
Gosh I love a bare stage, and this one was barer than most, it barely even used lighting – no disrespect to the enhancing design by Geoff Hense but in this case, I only had eyes for the multiple personalities of the Jongleur, the storyteller who presented no less than one hundred characters in a sweet ninety minutes, some of them in conversation with each other, with the audience, in scenes placed in crowds, in pubs and prisons, on top of mountains and in the shadow of the crucifixion. Spooner’s skill in giving each of the hundred their own distinct lives was exemplary. Carefree and profligate and licentious, it was magnificent to behold.
We are in a world of increasing inanity and totalitarianism. But we are not without agency. We must mock it at every turn. We must dissect it, chew it, deconstruct it, and return it to sender if it is not fit for purpose. After all, as our Jongleur tells us in the very first scene, the truth is only true if we believe it to be so.
