Fritters, Blinis and Bristin: an Evening of Comedy - Review

J Productions, the brainchild of theatre impresario Julia Holden, returned to Milan’s Teatro Filodrammatici on Wednesday 24th January, serving up a highly unusual and memorably tasty comic concoction. Directed by Justin Butcher and featuring an excellent ensemble cast (Stephen Guy Daltry, Rupert Mason, Jennie Eggleton and Butcher himself) Fritters, Blinis and Bristin: an Evening of Comedy offered food for thought and laughs galore.

You’ve definitely heard of fritters. You've probably heard of blinis (even if you've never eaten one). But Bristin?? Unless you’re a hard-core fan of Dario Fo (winner of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Literature), I doubt that word will ring a bell. Fear not, however - all will be revealed soon.

So, hopefully you've worked up a healthy appetitie: let’s tuck in. 

The programme was in two parts beginning with the fritters and blinis (the latter being East European pancakes buttered and served with smoked salmon or caviar. Anton Chekhov couldn’t get enough of them when he visited Siberia – and even wrote a story about a blini to die for). Before the interval, we were treated to three Chekhov one-act plays, vaudeville farces in fact. Farce may not be something you associate with the angsty samovar-centred drawing-room-and-veranda-based tragedies of Russia’s best-known dramatist. But apparently he churned them out when he was getting started (although his English Wikipedia page barely mentions them). 

Russian blinis with red caviar, sour cream and dill. Image: Cooking the World

Accompanied by Stephen Guy Daltry on the accordion, the show kicked off with a selection of Russian songs, which were also interspersed throughout the fritter- and blini-based segment as palate cleansers of sorts. (The company’s Kalinka got the audience clapping in time to the music: a slightly odd sensation, given the ongoing war between Ukraine and Russia. It should be noted, however, that the J Productions presentation of Under Milk Wood starring Guy Masterson-Mastroianni, staged in the same theatre in 2022, was in aid of Ukrainian refugees. Justin Butcher himself is an outspoken champion of human rights.)

Audience at the Teatro Filodrammatici

The first course in this Russian section took the form of a monologue entitled The Evils of Tobacco. A twitchy, snuff-taking gentleman, the henpecked husband of a penny-pinching harridan who rules her academy for young ladies (and hubby) with a rod of iron, is supposed to be delivering a scientific lecture warning his audience of the dangers of the “noxious weed” but he is constantly sidetracked from his main aim, griping and sniping at the woman who has made his life a misery. Rupert Mason’s delivery was flawless: the taut, nervous husband gradually takes the audience deeper into his confidence, finally uttering howls of long-suppressed despair before finally realising he has gone too far and withdrawing back into the straitjacket of his quiet desperation. In fact, as with all three fritters and blinis on offer here, the laughter has a bitter aftertaste of the kind we associate with the best 1970s British sitcoms: Steptoe & Son, Rising Damp, etc. People trapped in situations that would be tragic if they weren’t funny. (Mr Blini, anyone?)

Rupert Mason as the ageing vaudevillian and Stephen Guy Daltry as the prompter in Swansong

Next up was Swansong. An ageing actor (Mason again) finds himself alone in the theatre after the audience has left and the lights have gone out. He is startled by what he takes for an apparition: a ghostly figure combining Scrooge in a long white nightshirt and cap holding a candle with at least one of the Christmas ghosts: it turns out to be the theatre's old prompter (played by Daltry) who reveals that he sleeps in the theatre at night. Initially wallowing in self-pity, the old vaudevillian eventually rouses himself and relives his on-stage triumphs, belting out his greatest hits, including Hamlet and King Lear with the prompter feeding him his lines. As the has-been harangues the storm in the heath scene from Lear, the prompter drums up some thunder on a tambourine. They make an odd couple that recalls Ronald Harwood’s The Dresser, memorably brought to life on screen by Albert Finney as Sir, gradually sinking into dementia with his very own Fool at his side, the eponymous dresser, Norman (played by Tom Courtenay). 

Jennie Eggleton, Stephen Guy Daltry & Justin Butcher in The Bear

The final dish of the first half was The Bear. A peremptory creditor (played with enormous energy by great-coated and booted Justin Butcher) blusters his way into the drawing room of an impoverished widow (Jennie Eggleton) who owes him money. Shoving aside the ineffectual butler (Daltry), the ursine landowner works himself up into a rage, demanding a huge sum of cash to pay the interest on his mortgage. Ignoring the increasingly desperate pleading of the widow, the Bear installs himself in the drawing room, calling for drinks and making himself at home. Eventually, the outraged lady of the house challenges him to a duel and has her late husband’s duelling pistols brought down to the drawing room. Standing back to back, Widow and Bear prepare to face off and settle it once and for all. (I won’t say what happens next, in case you catch the show at a later date – but it’s a neat comic sleight of hand by the author of the better-known tragedies The Seagull, Uncle Vanya and The Cherry Orchard.)

Justin Butcher & Jennie Eggleton in Chekhov's The Bear

More Russian tunes and even some dancing – and thus ends the first section of this highly original evening with the audience licking its fingers and dabbing them at the fritter and blini crumbs left on the plate / stage.

Stephen Guy Daltry, Ruper Mason, Justin Butcher & Jennie Eggleton in One was Nude...

All of which brings us to the main course and dessert combined: Dario Fo’s One was Nude & One wore Tails. It’s basically a shaggy dog story played out on stage. Starting with two Italian streetsweepers having a lopsided philosophical debate – taking in the meaning of life, the universe and everything, the conversation between the smarter of the two and his more synaptically-challenged mate leaves the latter flummoxed but somehow convinced that he is actually a manifestation of God. This wide-ranging banter probably works better in Italian or even in the salad of dialects that Fo lovingly assembled and dressed with wordplay, folk wisdom and all the other ingredients of his (re)creation of the language of the medieval giuillare (or wandering jester) and the fabulatore, the figure of the working-class storyteller that he came to revere and sought to model. While the evening’s fritters and blinis are decidedly Russian, “Bristin” is actually another culinary reference with a deeply personal significance for Dario Fo. It means “pepper seed” and was the nickname of his grandfather, a yarn-spinning itinerant merchant whom the young Dario accompanied on his rounds, sitting beside him on his wagon, soaking up the old man’s tall tales and learning his storytelling technique by osmosis.

Stephen Guy Daltry & Justin Butcher in Dario Fo's One was Nude...

The ‘Nude’ in One was Nude & One wore Tails refers to an ambassador (Daltry) who finds himself in a compromising situation following a swift exit from an amorous encounter. Still wearing his top hat – and nothing else – he takes refuge in the street sweeper’s bin. The one in 'Tails' is a man in a tux who cycles round town and goes into posh restaurants to sell flowers. There is also a lady of the night (Eggleton in shiny red mac and fishnets) who’s concerned about the Vice Squad. Authority comes in the form of the policeman (actually a Carabiniere played by Mason) who has a key role in re-establishing the bourgeois order that the anarchic action threatens to overturn.

Rupert Mason, Stephen Guy Daltry & Justin Butcher in One was Nude...

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a nude ambassador in a bin must be in want of black tie so he can go home without alerting the suspicions of his wife. However, the proletarians he encounters during his naked odyssey end up bearing the brunt and taking the punishment for his misdeeds. (Here endeth Fo's riotous socialist lesson, which was the sort of thing that got him arrested and hounded by the authorities for most of his career, right up to the point when he won the Nobel and became pretty much untouchable. It's difficult to find a comparable figure in the English-speaking world: Dario Fo's career is intertwined with the rollercoaster politics of Italy in the 20th century.)

Rupert Mason & Jennie Eggleton in One was Nude & One wore Tails

The plot of One was Nude is convoluted and – as you might guess – farcical. At one point, the copper chases the ambassador (his modesty protected by a shopping bag worn like lederhosen) to the strains of The Benny Hill Show theme. (A thumbs up here for the excellent sound production, which also included comic-style sound effects when the rozzer administers some “hands on” policing to the street sweeper (and / or the flower seller – it’s a bit hazy now, your Honour).

Stephen Guy Daltry & Justin Butcher in One was Nude & One wore Tails

Reprising his role as accompanist, Daltry takes up his squeeze box again and the audience is invited to sing along to a rousing chorus of Bella Ciao, the Italian partisan anthem better known to younger audiences as the song that The Professor teaches to his city-named accomplices in the Spanish Netflix series Casa de Papel (unimaginatively rendered as Money Heist in the English version).

Stephen Guy Daltry, Justin Butcher, Jennie Eggleton & Rupert Mason in One was Nude...

Following a number of well-deserved curtain calls, Butcher came out onto the stage (now in civvies) and thanked Julia Holden, the theatre and the audience for the opportunity to bring Dario Fo in English back to to the stage in the city that he is most closely associated with. For Justin Butcher, this is obviously something of a mission and he has acknowledged Fo as his greatest theatrical influence. 

Poster with members of the cast: (anti-clockwise) Jennie Eggleton,
Justin Butcher, Rupert Mason & Stephen Guy Daltry

Overall, this was a deliciously satisfying evening of outstanding theatre featuring bravura performances by a group of highly talented actors, great music, brilliant costumes (especially the streetsweepers’ bowler hats – although I might be biased), a beautiful venue and “a lorra lorra laffs” (as the late, great Cilla Black might have put it).

As always, I await the next J Productions presentation with baited breath!

Your humble scribe (left) with the Welsh Cultural Attaché to Milan, Mr W. McHoya

Robert Dennis

January 28th 2024

Milan

About the Author

Robert Dennis is a Business English teacher based in Milan. He has been teaching for over 30 years both in the UK and in Italy. A long-time collaborator with John Peter Sloan, Robert published “Business English” (Gribaudo) in 2020. The book was launched with “Il Sole 24 Ore” and sold in newsstands throughout Italy. Robert has a website for people who want to learn Business English: payasyoulearn.com. The site features keywords and phrases, audio and exercises to help professionals improve their language skills. A graduate in English from Oxford University, Robert is also a translator and regular contributor to EasyMilano.com, the online magazine for expats.