The rude view of Dario Fo is that he is, in the current jargon, an unabashed pill-coater. That is, he inveigles us into swallowing his radical nostra by plastering them with funny lines, entertaining business, and farcical rough-and-tumble ultimately derived from the commedia dell'arte. It sounds pretty indigestible, not to say dubiously therapeutic; and so it would no doubt prove in practice, if his humour really were external rather than innate, imposed rather than intrinsic. As it happens, though, the rude view isn't the fair one. More often than his critics care to recognise, the humour is functional, not decorative. What mainly amuses us about Fo's Accidental Death of an Anarchist is also what shocks and disturbs us: the increasingly distraught antics of the Milanese cops as, prodded, needled and mocked by an updated version of the 16th-century zanni, they devise increasingly idiotic excuses for the defenestration of...