Dario Fo, the Italian comedian and playwright, whose hilarious Accidental Death of an Anarchist … savages the brutality of the Italian police, uses the clown's hijinks to do gorgeous battle with officialdom….

As a clown and an activist, Fo has discovered in farce a strategy for emotionally detaching both audience and actors from the tragic issues his plays debate. "In farce," he says, "you have the possibility of going beyond the character. You can comment on the situation while you're in it." Political laughter wants to disenchant; and farce's artificiality keeps the audience from being spellbound. The play becomes not only a criticism of life but of theatre.

Fo introduces a maniac into police headquarters and lets him turn the tables on authority to put the story right while spelling out the establishment's "strategy of tension." True to archetype, this prankster is a man of many names and disguises...