Camden New Journal - Theatre: Trial of Mussolini

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The Review - THEATRE
Published: 22 November 2007

Mussolini put in British dock for his war crimes

TRIAL OF MUSSOLINI
Theatro Technis

A MIGHTY storm lashed Theatro Technis on Sunday night as if the gods were playing prologue to its “world exclusive”: Michael Foot’s Trial of Mussolini.
This was the first time the radical pamphlet – penned romantically under the name of the Roman conspirator Cassius and published in 1943 – had been performed.
The mock trial holds the Italian dictator to account in a British court for war crimes.
The original play followed the 1940 book Guilty Men, by another dissenter ‘Cato’, which blasted the government over the Second World War.
It soon becomes obvious that it is not Benito Mussolini facing trial. Using evidence taken verbatim from public archives, Neville Chamberlain, Winston Churchill, lords and the Daily Mail are held to account.
They are made to explain their unbridled praise of the fascist regime, from the murder of the socialist leader Giacomo Matteotti in the 1920s through the invasion of Abyssinia and Spain, and right up until he declared war in 1940.
Mussolini’s defence counsel (Andrew Colley) concludes: “If they are guiltless, I cannot see by what standard the guilt of the prisoner is to be established.”
The argument packs a mighty punch and its publication date is almost as astonishing as the fact that it has taken more than 60 years to stage it.
The Italian Paoula Dionisotti, who won Best Actress in last year’s Evening Standard’s Theatre Awards, lost relatives during the fascist regime and insisted on being in the production. She gave a powerful condemnation of the tyrant.
The irrepressible George Eugenio, the theatre’s owner, revealed that a DVD is being made and another showing may be in the pipeline.

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