Rome and Away: Michael Monkhouse salutes comedy bigwig Stefano Fabrizi.
Rome and Away with Michael Monkhouse.
You may be forgiven for not knowing the name Stefano Fabrizi. But here in the Eternal City it’s synonymous with comedy, cabaret and other things beginning with c.
Yet it’s his work behind the scenes that make him such a consummate comic. More than anyone except Berlusconi, he’s responsible for transforming Rome into a veritable hotbed of anarchic antics.
First though, let’s backtrack. He informs me he’s Roman and born a certain number of years ago, depending which newspaper you read. After surviving the bogstandard ‘educational’ thing – think Erasmus without the sex – he attended courses in ‘bodily expression and mime’ – think Mr Bean with laughs – followed by a stint at Pino Manzari’s much-touted ‘Scaletta’ theatre. And after 1987 he had no probs making the transition from theatre to fleapit, from telly to stand-up. Including, deep breath…
Theatre: ‘Julius Cesar’, ‘Twelfth Night’, ‘The Merry Wives of Windsor’ and his own rather more amusing creations like ‘Breakages’, ‘Refuse’ (as in ‘Rubbish’ not ‘No thank you’, alongside comedians of the calibre of Roberto Ranelli and Pablo and Pedro), ‘Pools of Anxiety’ and ‘From Centocelle To Broadway.’ If you don’t know Rome – because I know there are some football fans reading this – Centocelle is our equivalent of Brixton, but not as safe.
TV: Three editions of ‘Seven Show’, the only broadcast welcoming new talent instead of just people who shag politicians; ‘Joking Apart’, possibly the nation’s best-loved skitfest; and ‘The Team’, a sort of hybrid of ‘the X-Files’ and ‘Lassie’. 2001 saw him writing and directing ‘Work In Progress’, which to my mind is more ‘Saturday Night Live’ than Italy’s official ‘Saturday Night Live’; and ‘Balls and Laughs’, somewhat akin to the sorely-missed ‘Fantasy Football League’.
Oh yeah, and straight, no-holds-barred comedy. The list is longer than Berlusconi’s criminal record, but let’s highlight 1998’s ‘Walter Chiari’ award, Rome’s live weekly ‘Comic Ring Show’, and now its annual ‘Shadow of the Colosseum’ showcase with ‘Don’t Worry, It’s All Right’. This is the kind of stand-up we know and love in Blighty but which is still struggling to establish itself out here: you know, everyday gripes regarding the habits, the vices and the virtues we can recognise and laugh at. ‘I’m going to ask questions about anything and everything that involves myself and the audience,’ he enthuses: ‘I’ll stress the mania and incongruence characterising our day-to-day existences – things like the new technology that’s making us more English than the Jubilee.’ Sound familiar? For you Brits maybe, but for us this kind of stuff is still in its evolutionary stages.
In the meantime, I shall doff my proverbial cap to Stefano Fabrizi, one of the few geniuses making it ever more possible.
