No Pay? No Way! (Sydney Theatre Co) ★★★★1/2

Written by By Dario Fo and Franca Rame. Adapted by Marieke Hardy. Sydney Theatre Company. Drama Theatre. 6 Apr – 11 May, 2024.

Sydney Theatre Co has brought back Marieke Hardy’s adaptation of Fo & Rame’s farce with a timeliness that makes this possibly more pointed than it was when it first appeared four years ago. The dual winds of a cost of living crisis and an inflation/rental crisis (not to mention enquiries into supermarket price-gouging) hit at the heart of No Pay? No Way! which dares us to think a bit deeper about the systems that surround us, and even the seemingly revolutionary rhetoric we often blindly spout on social media.

When STC first staged this four years ago I just missed it, so I was excited when they announced a return run. I had heard nothing but raves about the original, from both friends and critics, and it felt like a good fit for my personal tastes. Comedic farce built on political satire? Sign me up! And even after what can only be described as a disastrously stressful day in the office, I was totally hooked.

Antonia (Mandy McElhinney) and Margherita (Emma Harvie) are two women living in the same apartment complex, trying to make ends meet. Antonia has, to Margherita’s horror, participated in a riot at their local supermarket and stolen bags of food she couldn’t afford. But the exhilaration of the moment has turned into panic as she must hide the goods from her righteous husband Giovanni (Glenn Hazeldine). When the police start searching every apartment, they concoct a scheme to smuggle the goods out by pretending to be pregnant… and the farce begins.

Director Sarah Giles works the actors to the bone with a breakneck pace of verbal and physical comedy. Antonia’s ever evolving stories put McElhinney to the test, as the seemingly simple mistruths compound to grow into lies of theological proportion. Antonia is a bolshie whip-smart housewife with a grifter’s gift of the gab who’s been pushed to the edge by the cost of living.

McElhinney is matched by Hazeldine’s brilliantly politically-active but rather dim Giovanni, who grasps the plight of the worker but has little knowledge of female biology. The brilliant scene of Giovanni slowly wrestling with his hunger, staring at a tin of dog food, is both hilarious and clearly horrible. He is joined by Roman Delo as Margherita’s young husband Luigi, with even less idea of women. The cast is topped off with the towering Aaron Tsindos playing a variety of roles, most of them policemen, and pushing the comedy over the edge (the miming of a traffic cop, and the fourth-wall breaking plee for a place to rent are particularly brilliant). While I can’t compare to the original 2020 cast (which included Hazeldine and Tsindos), I can say this quintet is tight and charmingly funny.

But for me the real gem is the demolition of the fourth wall and the second act’s deconstruction (both physical and philosophical). As the age-old battle of capitalism v socialism gets dissected, the play takes things one step further, pushing us out of the easy, tokenistic, safe zone. I won’t say more for fear of spoiling your enjoyment. Charles Davis’s set is marvellous (getting its own round of applause). 

So, should we Aussies be rioting in Woolies? Looting our local Coles? Releasing anarchy down in Aldi? Probably, but while there’s joyful catharsis to watching it all play out on stage, you can’t help but wonder which side the centre left-leaning, monied theatre-goers of Sydney are really on.