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Michael Foot and Benito Mussolini |
A first night for Foot’s forensic
anti-fascist play
Director Alfio Bernabei gives a diary account of how he comes to be staging the première of Michael Foot’s drama The Trial of Mussolini
64 years after it was first published
July 20, 2007
I write to Michael Foot and push the envelope through his letterbox. I want to direct a staged reading of The Trial of Mussolini, a pamphlet he wrote in 1943, but I feel I need his permission before I go ahead. The pamphlet was a huge success at the time. Published by Gollancz, it sold more than 150,000 copies.
I remember my surprise when I came across it the first time, in 1985. I was directing a documentary for Channel 4 that dealt with the activities of Italian anti-fascists who had fled into exile in England during the Mussolini regime.
I was looking into archives to track down their writings condemning fascism. I found The Trial of Mussolini, written under the pseudonym “Cassius”, at the Marx Library in Clerkenwell.
The pamphlet was lambasting not just Mussolini, but the British ministers and public figures who had applauded him during the 20-year period leading up to the war. Such was the passion and vehemence of the writing that I thought the author must be an Italian anti-fascist who wanted to remain anonymous for fear of some retaliation.
Then someone told me that “Cassius” was Michael Foot. In those years of pre-spin Labour politics I had taken a liking to Mr Foot. There was a ring of integrity about the man.
I had seen him often on the 24 bus or walking his dog on the Heath. I also knew something about his social life. I had lived in a house in Nassington Road, owned by people who used to have drinks with him on Sunday mornings at the Freemason’s Arms.
But Michael Foot as the author of book that could have been written by Italian anti-fascists was a total revelation to me.
I developed a sense of gratitude towards him. When filming on my documentary began, I did something that took both the crew and Channel 4 by surprise: I asked four Italian survivors of the Arandora Star tragedy (the ship that sank with 1,200 internees on board, of which about 470 Italian civilians arrested in the UK died) and Richard Pankhurst, the son of Sylvia, whose anti-fascist work I greatly admired, to recite some lines from Foot’s pamphlet. I filmed them in the very building in Clerkenwell that had been used by Giuseppe Mazzini, the Italian freedom fighter, in mid-1800. To me, it all made perfect sense.
I gave a cassette of the documentary to Mr Foot when I met him in 1998. My book about Italian anti-fascists in the UK had been published in Milan and he agreed to present it at the Italian Cultural Institute.
He spoke about the anti-fascist work he had done, about his beloved Venice and about Ignazio Silone, probably his favourite author. The audience were enthralled. He left as he had come, with a smile on his face.
August 16, 2007
I meet George Eugeniou, director of Theatro Technis in Crowndale Road in Camden. I ask him if I can do the staged reading of The Trial of Mussolini at his theatre. I explain that Foot structured it as a courtroom drama and that the event would be a kind of world première.
George is intrigued. He immediately accepts the proposal. That’s what I was expecting. I met George in the late 1970s, when he was running a theatre in a railway shed off York Way.
At the time I had a theatre group called Bite. I presented two plays there, one about the coup in Chile, the other about the exploitation of immigrants. John Berger, the art critic, was among those who trod through the mud outside the shed to come and see us and gave us a rave review.
Later, when George opened a theatre in Crowndale Road, I directed Machiavelli’s Mandragola there and we had a full house for about three weeks. I greatly respect George. He has helped and inspired so many actors over the years. In May the theatre celebrated its 50th anniversary with a hugely successful event attended by the then Mayor of Camden and Jeremy Corbyn MP, among others.
September 20, 2007
I am assembling the cast. It is surprising how many actors want to be in it because of Michael Foot.
Andrew Colley, who will play Mussolini’s defence lawyer, says that at the height of the debate over the war in Iraq he spotted a letter in The Guardian sent in by a reader who wondered if this wasn’t the right time to stage The Trial of Mussolini.
No mystery about what the reader had in mind. In the pamphlet Foot imagines Mussolini arrested by the British and brought to London to stand trial for war crimes.
But what looks like an open and shut case develops into something quite different.
His counsel calls in nearly a dozen of British witnesses: ex foreign ministers and prime ministers, newspaper proprietors, journalists, and historians.
He demonstrates how some of them assisted Mussolini and even took him as a model for Britain. Then Mussolini speaks. He turns to the witnesses and calls them hypocrites.
First you helped me, he says, and then you turned against me: Why? Something Saddam Hussein might have asked.
It is not the only passage that gives topicality to this great piece of anti-fascist writing.September 28, 2007
I receive a call from SN. She calls from Michael Foot’s house. “Michael wants you to know that he is delighted with the idea of a reading of The Trial of Mussolini.”
Ah, that’s what I wanted to hear.
• The Trial of Mussolini, adapted and directed by Alfio Bernabei, will be given a staged reading at Theatro Technis, 26 Crowndale Road, London NW1 on Sunday November 18 at 7,30 pm Tickets £8, £ 5 concessions
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