The playwright vs. the prime minister.

• Author: D'Ambroso, Antonion
• Position: Two-Headed Anomaly - Theater Review

Dario Fo, the radical, Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright and actor, has finally set his satirical sights on Italy's notorious prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The result is the hilarious and surreal play Two-Headed Anomaly. Fo not only wrote and directs the play, he also has the lead part.

At the outset, we learn that Berlusconi has just had an emergency operation. He now shares the brain of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was killed by Chechen terrorists. In a scene that is vintage Fo, the terrorists gun down Putin as he and Berlusconi ready themselves for bed by practicing karate in matching kimonos. With Putin dead the play moves into even more farcical territory. Fo portrays Berlusconi, now with Putin's brain, as a two-and-a-half foot dwarf. To hysterical effect, Fo stands in a trench behind the stage with his arms hidden in pinstripe pants, his hands placed inside black shoes.

Fo, who has fully recovered from a stroke he suffered some years back and is as crisp and engaging as ever at the age of seventy-seven, concocted the absurd premise after listening to Berlusconi praise Putin for his violent suppression of Chechen rebels. Putin and Berlusconi have forged an unusual relationship, one that seems to transcend typical diplomatic interactions between world leaders.

A large portion of Two-Headed Anomaly revolves around the Italian leader and his wife, Veronica Lario, played by Franca Rame, Fo's partner in life and art. These scenes give the play its greatest force. Berlusconi is depicted as a petulant adolescent who is constantly in need of approval while Lario is like a stern mother figure humoring her unruly, mischievous child with patronizing words. Fo's characterization of the emotionally stunted Berlusconi cleverly plays on the largerthan-life view the prime minister has of himself. Fo mocks the media oligarch's fondness for using crude and reactionary rhetoric to denounce those who oppose him politically. Berlusconi has more than once described his political rivals' critiques as "persecution" similar to the "trials of Jesus Christ on the cross."

While Two-Headed Anomaly often leaves the audience laughing uncontrollably, the play smartly tackles a serious concern in both Italian cultural life and politics. Fo fears, as many do in Italy and throughout Europe, that Berlusconi's political power, combined with his vast wealth and controlling interest in more than 80 percent of the Italian media, presents a conflict of...