Commuter

Issue date: 3/15/04 Section: Entertainment

Did you hear the one about the young man whose identity cards, thanks to a malicious bureaucrat, identify him as a Labrador retriever?
Then you have the basic outline of "Archangels Don't Play Pinball," a satirical farce by Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo. The play, directed by NCC English professor Robert Mundhenk, was performed in February on the Main Campus.
The young man's attempts to convince the bureaucracy that he is in fact not a canine lead him from a cage in a dog pound to the arms of a senator's mistress. Interspersed in his adventures, besides the bureaucrats, are a pasta maker, Albanian Orthodox priest, detective inspector and a train conductor.
The play represents the frustration many experience when doing business with government agencies. The play is a comedy with some very realistic undertones.
Fo, who won the 1997 Nobel for Literature, has been praised for "Archangel." The Swedish Academy said Fo's jesting has a point, attacking forces in society that dehumanize and diminish the poor, the powerless and the disenfranchised.
Mundhenk described the play's message as universal, addressing the indignities we all suffer at the hands of
bureaucracy.

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