Product Description
Two plays written by the Italian farceur, Dario Fo, in conjunction with his wife and fellow-performer. Both plays start with the breakdown of a relationship and deal with the fate of women in a society in which both the social system in which they live and its dominant ideology are shaped by men. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (1)

Drag Queen Bess
This is a wonderful, witty play that deserves to be brought back in print immediately.Quite different from the recent romantic Elizabeths in _Elizabeth_ (directed by Shekar Kapur) and _Shakespeare in Love_ (directedby John Madden) ELizabeth I here appears in male drag throughout the play.(The play is subtitled "almost by chance a woman.")Representedas a grotesque figure, Elizabeth regularly goes out in London disguised asa man in order to spy on her subjects.Written in the early 1980s, theplay is a Jean Genetesque satire directed at Margaret Thatcher and her Torygovernment. It is one of many instances wherein Elizabeth is represented indrag.In a 1980s management training video, John Cleese played aThatcherian Elizabeth hectoring a restive Privy Council. And the lastepisode of The British sit-com _Blackadder II_ (Miranada Richardson of _TheCrying Game_ fame plays Quen Besie), a Prince Ludwig masquerades asElizabeth and kills the entire court.More recently, Labame houston'splaylet _Elizabeth R_ also has Elizbeth in drag. And in Sally Potter's_Orlando_, an ageing Elizabeth is played by the famous drag queen QuentinCrisp.Perhaps Fo's play is not so far away from _Elizabeth_ and_Shakespeare in Love_ as one might think at first sight.For though shedoes not appear in these films in male drag, Elizabeth is the cause of dragin others.In _Elizabeth_, Anjou's marriage proposal is dismissed afterElizabeth discovers him relaxing in bed dressed in women's clothes, and in_Shakespeare in Love_, only Elizabeth can see through the corss-dresseddisguises of both Shakespeare and Viola.Fo's _Elizabeth: Almost by Chancea Woman_ deserves a wide readership.I certainly hope to see in printagain soon. ... Read more

Product Description
A great coming-of-age novel, My First Seven Years (plus a few more) is Dario Fo's fantastic fictionalised memoir of his formative years, following his railwayman father around the various villages on the shores of Lago Maggiore in Northern Italy where they lived. Born in 1926 and growing up between the wars, Fo witnessed at close hand the struggles between Fascists and Partisans in the mountainous north.The novel is filled with the anecdotes, characters and sketches that were the inspiration for the creative genius of this winner of the Nobel Prize for Literature (1997). Above all it is a book filled with the characteristic vitality and humour that springs from all his of his written work. More than just a memoir, My First Seven Years is a work of literature that follows in a great line of imaginative childhood accounts, such as Proust's Remembrance of Things Past and Fournier's Le Grand Meaulnes, through, Italo Calvino's Marcovaldo stories. ... Read more

Product Description
A play by Dario Fo, the author of "Accidental Death of an Anarchist", "Mistero Buffo" and "Tricks of The Trade". The play is a mixture of Vatican politics and classical Italian comedy. This volume is an adaptation by Andy de la Tour. ... Read more