Rhum + Clay: Mistero Buffo

Rhum and Clay present Dario Fo’s devilishly funny masterpiece, Mistero Buffo, a darkly comic look at the absurdities and inequalities of everyday life, as seen through the eyes and tales of a travelling storyteller.

Banned as blasphemous for many years, but perhaps even more relevant now, Mistero Buffo takes an unflinching but humorous aim at those who manipulate truth and belief for power and control. With culture wars driving division and a pandemic that has highlighted vast economic inequalities, can laughter (and a little righteous anger) help unite us?

A tour-de-force that won Julian Spooner The Stage’s Award for Best Performance, this is an extraordinary, virtuosic romp through a hundred characters and locations in the person of one man. Our 21st century travelling storyteller, yet another employee of the gig economy, rushes from his last job of the day to deliver a subversive, gleeful rallying cry for the disillusioned and disenfranchised…

★★★★★ "Miraculously good theatre" Edinburgh Guide 
★★★★★ "A Shapeshifting, body-popping, mesmerising performance" WhatsOnStage
★★★★★ "Magnificant production….with an astounding performance" The Stage
★★★★★ "Julian Spooner is simply outstanding" British Theatre Guide
★★★★★ "As a mime he is flawless, as a storyteller he is utterly compelling" Broadway Baby
"Spooner tackles a huge cast of characters… with astonishing sharpness and clarity" The Guardian

About the company:

Rhum and Clay is led by two co-Artistic Directors, Julian Spooner and Matt Wells, and Executive Producer, Sally Cowling. ‘Rhum and Clay’: Theatre that embraces the magical, the comical and the intoxicating, but is willing to scrabble in the earth and the dirt where the real stories are to be found; excavating for the urgent, the complicated and the beautiful. The company’s work is always devised and physically virtuosic. Productions are cinematic in the telling, playing with overlapping narratives, with flashbacks and montages that cumulatively create artful, visually textured on-stage worlds.

Over the past decade the company has created nine productions that have toured at home and abroad with their 2017 production of Testosterone and this production of Mistero Buffo playing to audiences in Brazil, Canada, Kazakhstan, France and Venezuela in the eighteen months prior to lockdown. The company is based in London at the New Diorama Theatre, where they are an Associate Ensemble, and is the recipient of numerous awards.

rhumandclay.com

Tickets and performance information:

Tickets:

• £14/£12 concessions
• £10 for Falmouth University and University of Exeter students

Performance information:

• Age Guidance: 14+
• Content Warning: Blasphemy, drug and alcohol use, suicidal ideation, simulation of infanticide, sexual assault.
• Running time: 80 mins (no interval) 

Production credits:

• Adapted by Julian Spooner & Nicholas Pitt
• Performed by Julian Spooner
• Directed by Nicholas Pitt

Contact us:

T: +44(0)1326 259349