1989

Mistero Bufo

Lenny Kovner

Lion Theatre

Reviewed by Murray Bramwell

Mistero Bufo, as Lenny Kovner drily informs us, does not translate as Mister Boofhead. The Mysteries  are medieval stories taken  from the Bible and Apochrypha, as well as from   the  lives of the saintly , the bold and the not-so-beautiful. Presented in what began as eisteddfods of community theatre, presided over by a watchful clergy, they grew to become travelling popular entertainment on a scale to rival the Church itself.

Jesters, jongleurs, buffoons and clowns have always been prepared to claim satiric licence despite such major disincentives to freedom of speech as  hanging and burning. Mistero Bufo celebrates  their courageous refusal to be impressed by the corruption and excess of prelates and princes.

That the Mysteries are  still a matter of interest for audiences has been amply proven by Dario Fo, the Italian actor, playwright and activist, who assembled this show and performed it to millions, often to crowds of twenty thousand at a time. Fo, with his wife Franca Rame, has  entertained and inspired audiences in Europe  since the early 1950’s. Their work became less genial after 1968  when in Italy, as elsewhere, the secret armies of the State began to tread the streets with riot shields. Fo’s Can’t Pay, Won’t Pay and the hugely successful Accidental Death of an Anarchist, articulated the views of a politically conscious populace, with a strong mix of satire and hard truth. Fo and Rame became heroes of progressive culture with a reputation for making engrossing , accessible theatre.

Lenny Kovner has translated and adapted  Mistero Bufo for Australian audiences, and,  equal parts  Dario Fo and Rodney Rude,  it works well. Kovner , who grew up in Australia, has worked extensively in the UK and Europe. His Mistero Bufo has toured widely and it is a crying shame that this return season to Adelaide has not been better attended.

He may be performing Mysteries but there is nothing mystifying about Kovner’s presentation. In a long welcoming prologue he outlines, among many other things, the varieties of popular theatre in the Middle Ages from the macabre xcitement of public burnings to the religious festivals introduced to celebrate Corpus Christi. Kovner is engaging and smartly to the point – if Pope Gregory was the Steven Spielberg of his time, he explains, then Augustine was his Clint Eastwood.

Always receptive to his audience, Kovner like Fo, the master, demolishes the sanctity not only of religious affectation but of the proscenium also. Performed without props, costume, make-up or lighting changes, his theatre is almost alarmingly free of illusion, but  when he moves into the first sketch, a miracle play about a blind man and a cripple healed by Christ during the Passion, he is entirely in dramatic command.

Moving adroitly between the powermongers of the Middle Ages, Gregory and Boniface and the Pinochets and telephone salesmen of today, Lenny Kovner threads together narratives of dissent and endurance. There is droll  satisfaction in seeing the preposterous vanity of Boniface VIII –  poncing about in his mitre and cloak, terrorizing altar boys -met by the simple egalitarianism of the risen Christ. Boniface explains that Peter had decreed that there would be a pope,  the first of a succession of leaders- what, he looks incredulously to Christ, you didn’t say that at all! You don’t have to live walking distance from the Vatican to find that funny.

Another story describes the ordeals of a man, who, like Job, is pushed beyond his patience trying to claim and maintain ownership of his land. Finally, having lost his wife and family, he is ready to hang from the rafters. Rescued from the brink by Christ in disguise he is given the gift of theatre. He becomes a street clown, an activist. The story, from Sicily, has a harsh comfort and a tough wit- like the final piece, an eight voice account of the raising of Lazarus.

With Mistero Bufo Lenny Kovner has taken on a daunting task with memorable and often hilarious results. Fo  has warned that the middle classes enjoy satire like alka seltzer and this is   something of a problem  for Kovner too. He conspires with an audience that he also distrusts- but never as much as the Bonifaces and the Bonds. So he renders accordingly and  his message is well-judged,  disconcerting and direct,  reminding us  that there is no better giantkiller than comic ridicule.

Commissioned for The Adelaide Review but not published. 1989 ?