Dario Fo’s 1974 Marxist farce, Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!, has plenty of messages for us in today’s era of inflationary prices. In its staging by Gwydion Theatre Company, we learn that women have led a protest against grocery prices by refusing to pay what the supermarket charges. Instead the women walk off with grocery bags stuffed with goods for which they haven’t paid.
Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! is directed by Nena Martins with a script translated and adapted by Ember Sappington. The play does a good job of expressing the playwright's messages, but lacks the comic touch one might expect of a farce. Gwydion is presenting the play in a small studio space on the second floor of the Greenhouse Theater Center.
As the play opens, Antonia (Audrey Busbee) arrives home with her friend Margherita (Ellie Thomson). Both are carrying several heavy grocery bags and Antonia quickly explains to Margherita how she was able to obtain such a bounty of food. (The Trader Joe’s bags are a nice touch.) Antonia shares some of the food with her friend and Margherita, fearful of police looking for the food thieves, stows it under her coat, thus suddenly looking very pregnant. (This faux pregnancy is a running theme of Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! with both women deceiving their husbands and police about whether either of them is actually pregnant.)
Their husbands—Giovanni (Caleb Petre) and Luigi (Jason Pavlovich)—work together in industrial jobs, which gives Fo the opportunity to air their complaints about low wages and greedy bosses.
Fo displays his anti-Catholicism too as Antonia tells Giovanni that the Pope’s opposition to the Pill is the reason for Margherita’s pregnancy. Margherita is a “poor woman who's a Catholic who has double feature nightmares every night, starring the Pope looming up and warning her: 'You're sinning, you know. You should bear children!'”
Director Martins keeps the action moving briskly but the script has many complications, which means a running time of almost two hours with one intermission. I’d like to see an adaptation that brings Can’t Pay in at around 90 minutes with no intermission.
The four main actors are all capable and believable in their roles, although director Martins and sound director Morgan Wilson should dial down the volume. All four actors seem to be shouting much of the time, which is not necessary in the tiny studio space. The single set (design by Grayson Kennedy, Jack Kennedy and Maddie Hillock) is a realistic view of a tiny tenement apartment; other scenes are performed in front of that set (lighting by Wilson defines the space). Costumes are by Bob Webb.
Andrew Shipman, the fifth cast member, performs masterful duty as the policeman, detective (and sometime corpse), gravedigger and elderly parent.
Dario Fo was an Italian playwright, actor, theater-maker, and campaigner for the Italian left wing. He received the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature. Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! is considered one of his best known plays internationally, along with The Accidental Death of an Anarchist. His work depended heavily on improvisation and the ancient Italian style of commedia dell’arte. He died in 2016 at 90.
Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay! is performed by Gwydion Theatre Company in Studio 44 at the Greenhouse Theater Center, 2257 N. Lincoln Ave., through December 17. Tickets available here.
Gwydion Theatre was originally formed in Los Angeles and relocated to Chicago a year ago. Their mission is to produce “subversive and politically charged theater.”
For more information on this and other plays, see theatreinchicago.com.
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