The Open Couple directed by Faraz Khan used elements of the theatre of the absurd in interpreting Dario Fo’s play. By Utpal K Banerjee
Dario Fo (born 1926) is an Italian actor-playwright, comedian, singer, theatre-director, stage-designer, song-writer and political campaigner but is best known as an Italian farceur. A 1997 Nobel laureate in literature, he is arguably the most widely performed contemporary playwright in world theatre, whose dramatic work depends on improvisation and, more famously, the ancient Italian style of commedia dell’arte. The Swedish Academy praised Fo as a writer “who emulates the jesters of the Middle Ages in scourging authority and upholding the dignity of the downtrodden.”
The Open Couple (Coppia aperta, Quasi Spalancata in Italian, 1983) is a play by Fo and, like some of his other plays, has a romantic plot written with his wife Franca Rame. In this farce about sexual politics in marriage, a man persuades his suicidal wife that an open marriage is politically correct and embarks on liaisons with younger women: to her dismay and fury.
After deciding to be on her own, the tables are turned when she confesses to a new man: a Nobel-prize-nominated professor and inspired singer-songwriter. It is the husband who now becomes suicidal. Interestingly, the play was first staged with Fo and Rame themselves as the protagonist-duo, to be promptly banned by the Italian censors for below-18 audiences, when Rame included — as a prologue — her monologue: The Rape: recounting her own cruel rape that happened once.
The Open Couple, presented by 71 MM Production and directed by Faraz Khan in the Mahindra Theatre festival, is vintage Fo. On a sparse stage, empty oblong frames hang down. The two characters sit on hard stools — with white paint on face and red blobs on the cheek.
In the ambience as well as the dialogue both verging on the surrealistic, elaborate sarcasm is vent on the husband’s notion of an “open marriage.” Is it a mad-cap masquerade or a roller-coaster circus ring, or rather, just a normal relationship between a man and a womanIJ
Beginning with the wife as a suicidal emotional wreck, the play progresses through a series of both funny and gloomy vignettes, and ends with a complete role-reversal. Instead of coping always with her man’s idea of “open marriage”: to enable him space for sundry dalliances, the wife walks out into the audience: to herald a new man in her life.
Excerpts of an interview with the director:
What has been your idea to use face-paints and cheek-blobs that are usually used for mime artistesIJ
I wanted a mix of mime and live dialogues in my play and, therefore, chose Commedia dell’arte — Fo’s own medium of expression — as a means of communicating the text because of its exaggeration of the mundane nature of life into hilarious and poignant dramatic moments. Commedia is theatre characterised by masked types which began in Italy in the 16th century and was responsible for the advent of improvised performances: based on sketches or scenarios.
Commedia was performed by professional actors (and actresses, for the first time) who perfected a specific role, defined by the mask. Face-paints and red blobs are, for me, the nearest to the idea of mask.
But in your mode of expression, you’ve used theatre of the absurd as well…
I found an abundance of absurdist elements in Fo’s play in both situations and dialogues. I have used absurd compositions and constructions in interpreting the play, though not to the extent of a Becket or Pinter.
Your use of the chamber-pot as a stage-prop right in mid-stage, for instance…
Absolutely, it lends such an air of total absurdity, through which Fo could possibly be interpreted. I’ve made it an alternative sitting device as well as a receptacle of the knick-knack that the dramatis personae constantly use.
The play has only two characters interacting from beginning to end. Did you face any difficulty in filling up time and spaceIJ
Yes, Fo’s is only a 34-page script. I had to create many dramatic moments in my sub-text to let the charfacters constantly engage themselves and remain engrossingly interesting to the audience!
Could you comment on your musicIJ
When I first read Fo’s script a few years back, believe me, music came first. My head was full of various sounds: natural, man-made and instrument-made. A lot of the original sounds are still to be found in the final product.
Finally, about your choreography…
A lot of gestures and locomotion were planned by me. But my team of actors and other workers, honestly speaking, have contributed a lot and improvised all along: in keeping with Fo’s guiding spirit.