No Pay? No Way! review

There seems to be a resurgence of interest in Dario Fo’s work currently, and it couldn’t be better timed. Sheffield Theatres’ production of Accidental Death of an Anarchist is about to open in the West End, and now comes this newly renamed revival of Can’t Pay? Won’t Pay!.

Like Tom Basden, adapter of Sheffield Theatres’ Accidental Death, Marieke Hardy updates Fo’s source material to make this riotous farce about the cost-of-living crisis even more pertinent. Depicting a society in which the powerful avoid tax and raid the state coffers, while ordinary people must choose between paying their gas bills or feeding their families, seems more social realism than satire in 2023. Yet director Bryony Shanahan’s approach is far from po-faced.

Shanahan and Hardy recognise that this is a comedy first and foremost. It barely pauses to draw breath, as it unfolds its story of two housewives who steal food and then try to hide their stash from their husbands in increasingly farcical ways. Samantha Power is delightfully frenetic as Antonia, dashing all over the stage as she attempts to persuade Katherine Pearce’s Margherita to feign pregnancy and hide their booty under her coat.

Anwar Russell gains some of the biggest laughs of the evening playing multiple parts, including a delightfully camp police officer hunting for the stolen goods, while both Roger Morlidge and Gurjeet Singh are hilariously deadpan as the husbands, blissfully unaware of their wives’ antics. All five actors bounce off each other beautifully, displaying immaculate comic timing.

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