One should approach the feisty, hit-and-miss Seattle debut of Dario Fo's "Archangels Don't Play Pinball" at Capitol Hill Arts Center with an awareness of its celebrated author's comic philosophy.

"If you can make people laugh, you can open up their minds," the Nobel Prize-honored Fo has said. "You remember things much better through laughter than through tears."

Making his audience question authority, and laugh hard (at times until they weep), has been Fo's great gift, since he began regaling friends with satirical monologues in his native Italy half a century ago.

In tandem with wife and creative partner Franca Rame, Fo went on to funnel his politically fueled humor into plays. And a few of them — "We Won't Pay! We Won't Pay!," "The Accidental Death of an Anarchist" (which Seattle's Strawberry Theatre Workshop will produce this fall) — have burrowed into the American stage repertoire.

Theater review


"Archangels Don't Play Pinball" runs Thursdays — Saturdays, through July 30, at Capitol Hill Arts Center, 1621 12th Ave., Seattle; $15-$18 (www.capitolhillarts.com or 800-838-3006).

But with Fo's brand of left-wing merriment, and his strong ties to the improvisational traditions of Italian commedia dell'arte, much is often lost in transition.

That brings us back to CHAC's "Archangels Don't Play Pinball" — a vigorous, ambitious and bumpy outing directed by CHAC artistic head Matthew Kwatinetz.

In this reworking of an English translation by Ron Jenkins, "Archangels" centers on the kind of sanctified fool Fo has often embodied on stage: the durable schnook Sunny Weather (aka Tiny), court jester for a gaggle of small-time thieves (played by a hardworking ensemble of seven).

Praise the angels that the role is in the capable hands of adroit Seattle actor Gabriel Baron — who may just be a reincarnated commedia buffoon himself.

Compact, wide-eyed and a whiz at slapstick, Baron comes off as an endearing combo of wiseass and doofus. He keeps us rooting for Sunny as he is mocked by callous comrades, battered by bureaucrats and chosen by the fates to impersonate a senator, and fall for (naturalmente!) a sweet-hearted peach of a prostitute. (Enacted by the vivacious and touching Emily Chisholm, Angela is one of those streetwalker waifs Giulietta Masina perfected in Fellini films.)

"Archangels" is, in essence, an homage to all can't-keep-'em-down underdogs, who survive by a wink and a pratfall — from commedia greats to Chaplin and Keaton.

And the scenario is very anarchic, even by Fo standards. It begins with a piroshki heist and a fake wedding, and later incarcerates Sunny in a Washington, D.C., dog pound before propelling him by train to a patriotic American town where everyone has a Slavic accent.

But the plot, commedia style, is mainly a license to cavort — and broadly parody government red tape, corrupt politicians and thick-brained thieves who don't realize their in-house fool is fooling them.

CHAC's version has no lack of animated lazzi (gags) — some inspired (Angela's one-woman love scene, Sunny's train adventures), others screechy and overextended (including, unfortunately, the protracted opening scene).

Witty scraps of live instrumental and choral vocal music (composed by Dan Dennis) help weave the story's disjointed segments together.

But what's missing is an effective translation or update of Fo's political mockery.

There's no sense that bureaucratic inefficiency in 1950s Italy wasn't just annoying but survival-threatening and symbolic of post-war social chaos. And the figure of a lascivious, greedy legislator (played by Basil Harris) should be more villainous — or at least funnier.

CHAC's "Archangels" can still be enjoyed for Baron's impressive revelry, and its genial comic teamwork. But a Fo play without a political edge is rather like pasta marinara — without the tomatoes.

Misha Berson: mberson@seattletimes.com