A socio-political play is not usually the kind favoured by NUS halls of residences for their annual drama productions.  

But this year’s Sheares Hall production goes against the grain with their staging of Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo’s Accidental Death of An Anarchist on March 20 and 21. 

According to director Christine Chong, one of her main concerns is whether the play will succeed in getting through to the audience. 

“The level of expectation of the audience is one thing,” said the final-year English Literature major, pointing out that the bulk of the hall audience usually just wants to be entertained. 

“I don’t want to underestimate them, but at the same time I don’t want to overestimate them either,” she said. 

Sheares Hall’s past productions have been comedies or farces, so Chong felt that Dario Fo’s best known play was right up Sheares’ alley.

According to Chong, even though the script can be rather convoluted, it does have its fair share of physical comedy. 

Set in 1960s Italy, the play is based on real-life occurrences involving an anarchist railway worker who fell – or was thrown – out of a police headquarters window.  

First staged in 1970, Accidental Death of An Anarchist has been translated and adapted by theatre companies in Washington DC, Minneapolis, London and Delhi. It also had a short run on Broadway in 1984. 

In many of the subsequent re-adaptations of the play, it was tweaked to fit into the contexts of the respective countries.  

Although the play does not allude to Singapore explicitly, the Sheares adaptation nevertheless mixes the original Italian setting with a number of Singapore references.  

In one scene, a character makes a pointed mention of how “(in Singapore) class runs deeper than nationhood,” in covert reference to the news in January 2007 of Myanmar’s junta leader Than Shwe being given treatment in a Singapore hospital.  

Characters even break into a rendition of “Count on Me Singapore” at the end of the first act.  

In the original play, the characters sang a four-part harmony to the “Song of Anarchy” instead. Later adaptations favoured the use of nationalistic songs from their home country.

Chong had also initially wanted to make a stronger allusion to escaped alleged terrorist Mas Selamat Kastari, who is like the anarchist in Fo’s play. Mas Selamat too exited law enforcement headquarters via a window.  

While at first she wanted to send out a message with the play, she recognised that “there are practical limitations as to how strongly you can push a play’s message.” 

One such limitation, she felt, was in the lack of acting experience within her cast, which meant that instead of developing the artistic direction in which she wanted the play to develop, she had to devote more energy to guiding most of the cast in their acting chops. 

So is the NUS student community ready for a socio-political play? 

Second-year History major Desmond Loi pointed out that such socio-political plays “will only attract those who are interested” and thus “some people are not going to get it.”

He agreed that NUS students are ready, but only those who are “into this kind of thing.”

Political Science sophomore Ankita Varma agreed. 

She said, “When you do hall productions, you’re usually doing it for the mainstream audience.” 

Chong mused, “I don’t know if they’ll be open to it, or if they’ll even get it.” 

She added that the typical hall audience is considered more conservative. 

Still, Chong singled out the play’s closing scene as particularly provocative, expressing her hope that at least it will set the audience thinking. 

The ending of the play will force the audience to make a moral decision along with the characters.