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MISTERO BUFFO. THE COLLECTED PLAYS OF DARIO FO, VOLUME TWO. By Dario Fo. Translated by Ron Jenkins, based on the editing of Franca Rame. New York: Theatre Communications Group, 2006; pp. xxxii + 169. $15.95 paper.
The political and cultural contexts of the plays of 1997 Nobel Prize-winner Dario Fo are usually downplayed in the US, where most of his plays are produced to highlight their comedic value, and where books about the author focus mainly on his commedia dell'arte acting style. These choices limit the depth of experience of both playgoers and readers because they fail to acknowledge the roots of Fo's work and its far-reaching implications within postwar Italian culture. Ron Jenkins amends these faults in the introduction to his recent translation of Mistero Buffo, the best-known of Fo's plays, by acknowledging the political turmoil and the religious scandal provoked by this piece and by locating it within Italian culture of the 1970s. Mistero Buffo attempts to correct the ecclesiastical censorial view of the Bible by rewriting pivotal moments in both the Gospels and Church history, just as the giullari-traveling storytellers and jesters-would have done in the Middle Ages when performing in public squares.
In his introduction, Jenkins, who has translated and written extensively on Fo, reports on the political blackballing of the playwright from all public media, allegedly due to the political intervention of the Vatican. Jenkins also includes excerpts of the 1977 vitriolic...