★★★1/2
Adelaide Fringe. Tom Corradini Teatro, Fisico Festival & The Garage International. 20 Feb 2023
A chair, a violin, a cap on a music stand and a portrait of a woman on a table. Mussolini enters from stage right with a black tie sitting askew on a black shirt, unbuttoned pocket buttons and ee-gads(!) plastic men’s long boots with pants wrinkled above them. Now I would have thought Il Duce would dress to impress, so this is either faulty costuming or part of the satire, but the latter is not strong enough to be fully distinguishable from a mistake.
Sole performer and playwright Italian Tom Corradini operates his eponymous comic and educational theatre near Turin and has had this show on the road since at least 2015, the year he won the Best Performance Award in the Prague Fringe. Fascism is supposed to be dead in Italy but the recent elections showed Il Duce needs to be put back in his box. After the applause, Corradini explained that most of the script is stuff Mussolini actually said, which was augmented with audial snippets of his time, but mainly focusing on World War II. It’s clearly a well-researched show that is regularly performed for schools.
Corradini fortunately has the physiognomy of the dictator – that’s a great advantage. The famously photographed down-pointing mouth and fisted hands on hips is copiously copied. Corradini brooks no admiration for the war leader, and employs techniques historically developed in Italy of commedia dell’arte – exaggeration, clown faces and absurdity - to make the man a mockery. Still, it doesn’t seem strong enough – Mussolini draws a curious fascination and one craves an explanation of his magnetism. The physical satire is so mixed with Corradini’s verisimilitude to the man to the extent the counterpoint punches seem pulled.
Corradini brings in several languages – his use of Italian to an English-speaking audience is great colour, but the wavering English accents are sometimes confusing, and going too fast didn’t help. Hitler and Mussolini had quite a mutual admiration going on. The Hitler puppet was brilliant and puppets of his Jewish mistress and pen pal Churchill would have been useful. The show reveals much of Mussolini – his philosophy for persuasion, views on power and even family life - and behind the bluff was not a monster but a man with five kids and a mother, who was astonished at his early success.
Probably not your cup of cappuccino if Mussolini isn’t on your reading list, but a great fantasy of being in the room with Il Duce.
David Grybowski
When: 17 to 25 Feb
Where: The Garage International @ Adelaide Town Hall
Bookings: adelaidefringe.com.au
