Mistero Buffo by Dario Fo and Franca Rame, after 30 years, returns to the “Giorgio Gaber” Lyric Theater in Milano

Mistero Buffo by Dario Fo and Franca Rame, after 30 years, returns to the “Giorgio Gaber” Lyric Theater in Milano.

Exhilarating, provocative, powerful, timely, epic, masterful. On March 22, 2023 (at 20.45 pm), at Giorgio Gaber Lyric Theater by Milano, returns, after thirty years, “Funny Mystery 50”, the most famous show by Dario Fo and Franca Rame. To interpret it will be, once again, Mario Pirovano, directed by Fo himself.

The show, produced by the Fo Rame Theater Company and sponsored by the Fo Rame Foundation, was staged in a new form in 2019 to celebrate fifty years since the first performance of Mistero Buffo. Performed for the first time in May 1969 and performed again, to this day, in over five thousand productions, each time enriched by new jesters, “Mistero Buffo” is a masterpiece that marked the history of the twentieth century.

An extraordinary comic-dramatic mixture, staged in Italy and abroad, in squares, in schools, in factories, in theaters and even in churches, whose roots lie in popular theatre, that of medieval sacred representations, of jesters and of the Commedia dell'Arte. Dario Fo and Franca Rame have collected oral tales, legends and documents of popular theater from various Italian regions for years and then re-presented them in this hilarious show.

The monologues, highly provocative, have an ironic and prophetic flavour, which amuses, stimulates and fascinates. Mistero Buffo is a show that has the ability to involve everyone, even the younger generations. The jesters, in fact, deal with ever-current themes: power, injustice, hunger, rebellion, the search for a worthy life to share joyfully.

The continuous references to current events, which frame the various songs, reveal the present with its false naivety and hypocrisies, giving the public many moments of reflection but also of uncontainable comedy. The songs are recited in a language that combines different dialects of northern and central Italy: a perfectly understandable language, thanks to the powerful gestures of Mario Pirovano, which Fo himself defined «very talented storyteller».