Asbury Park Press
“The playwright takes passionate potshots at some plump and inviting targets – corrupt constabulary, pompous judiciary and complicit media – he has the good sense to wrap it all up in a playfully powerful bit of nonsense…even a scene change got applause…”

Star Ledger
“If Arnie Burton (The Maniac) had been around 80 years ago, the Marx Brothers undoubtedly would have adopted him...monkey business is his specialty…  John Ahlin’s walrus like face and body are just right for the pompous Superintendent.”

Two River Times
“Arnie Burton is a relentless, uninhibited actor, and he gets lots of laughs…(as The Maniac). The rest of the cast…serves well (as the comic foils).”

The New York Times

"Mr. Pyzocha’s set (is) a small masterpiece of skewed geometry perfectly suited to the absurdist Fo story. Mr. Burton’s banter with the audience is also great fun."

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If Arnie Burton had been around 80 years ago, the Marx Brothers undoubtedly would have adopted him.

That Burton was born too late to join Groucho, Chico, Harpo, and Zeppo is good news, though, for those who attend the season opener at the Two River Theatre Company in Manasquan.

For in "Accidental Death of an Anarchist," Burton becomes his own Marx Brother, whom we'll call Pesto. He is, after all, a terrible pest to the police officers whom he visits.

Playwright Dario Fo actually named Burton's character Maniac -- which the actor very much lives up to. Like everyone else, Maniac heard about the recent scandal at the police station. An anarchist died after falling from a fourth-floor window. Did he commit suicide, as the cops insist, or did they push him out?

Maniac drops by and impersonates a judge who'll get to the bottom of the crime. When the police give their version of what happened, he pleasantly agrees with everything they say -- before warning that others might not believe them.

So he'll help them come up with more convincing excuses. Case in point: The Beat Cop says that he did try to prevent the anarchist from falling, and grabbed the victim's foot as he fell out the window -- but all that happened is the poor soul's shoe came off in his hand.

"But the anarchist's body had two shoes on it," says Burton, with a beatific smile that suggests this isn't a problem. "So just say that you rushed down the stairs as he was falling, and put his shoe back on when he reached the second floor window."

In this absurdist fashion, Fo comments on a similar incident that happened in his native Italy in 1969. After the police were cleared of an almost identical crime, Fo decided to criticize it, but felt he'd be safer if he couched his play as a farce.

Lucky for Burton he did. The actor, who has the profile of lovable anteater, drops on all fours to impersonate a rabid dog much as Groucho would, only to jump up later and pretend to be a peg-legged amputee. He must have 80% of the lines, which case him to deliver double talk at triple speed.

Pity the poor actors who must play Burton's straight men. The script doesn't allow them much more than to look agape at his frantic antics. Still, credit to Jeff Galfer as the Beat Cop, who at first appears to be as rigid as one of the Nutcrackers in Tchaikovsky's ballet. Galfer does well at deconstructing as the play continues.

his explanations with the assurance of one who's long become accustomed to being believed.

As the Inspector, Kevin Kelly is a callow young man who, when grilled, soon knows he's over his head -- but oh, how he hopes he's getting away with his paltry explanations.

Lucas Caleb Rooney is appropriately buffoonish as a Minor Official, and Alicia Roper makes the most of her brief scene as a Journalist who uses her feminine wiles to get what she wants.

Robert Pyzocha's set has beautifully askew walls, whicc nicely complements Fo's message. Too bad that director Dave Mowers has staged the play too sluggishly. At two-plus hours, it needs to go faster.

The preceding question was overheard from a woman in the audience at “Accidental Death of an Anarchist.” The politically charged comedy by internationally renowned playwright Dario Fo is at Manasquan’s Algonquin Arts Theatre as the opening show of Two River Theatre Company’s 2004-2005 season.

Make no mistake there is a point to Fo’s controversial (and astoundingly successful) 1970’s- vintage satire- quiet a few of them, in fact, and all of them spelled out very plainly, even patiently, by the characters. The Nobel Prize-winning Italian author’s sometimes preachy and didactic script (heard here in a fairly recent British translation by Simon Nye) was inspired by a real-life 1969 incident in which a Milanese railroad worker mysteriously plunged to his death from police headquarters during the course of an interrogation concerning a terrorist bombing in a public place.

Fo’s very real outrage over the officially “accidental” demise of an innocent man contributed to the eventual exoneration of the unfortunate suspect – as well as the ultimate exposure of the incompetent officials  in charge of the botched investigation and subsequent cover up. Still while the playwright takes passionate potshots at some plump and inviting targets – corrupt constabulary, pompous judiciary and complicit media – he has the good sense to wrap it all up in a playfully powerful bit of nonsense.

Despite the title, then, this play is not so much about the “Anarchist” who went out the window but what comes crawling in the window afterward – an apparently nameless certifiably insane imp of the perverse known on the program only as The Maniac. Like the enigmatic detective in J.B. Priestley’s “an Inspector Calls,” this Maniac is a mysteriously motivated device of a character, who endeavors to pry the truth from the other hapless souls on stage. Only, you know funny.

Impersonating a judge, a bishop and a battle scarred detective; employing outrageous costume choices and shticky vocal characterizations, The Maniac manages to get to the bottom of the circumstances surrounding the tragic incident like some cuckoo Columbo. He’s embodied here by Arnie Burton, who channels much of the furniture- climbing energy of Fo’s fellow countrymen Roberto Benigni—while bringing to mind some of the actor-director Christopher Guest’s most vivid work. Just don’t expect any of the warmer qualities of those performers, however: Burton’s Maniac is a cruel and canny smart-ass who plays with the other characters’ heads like the manic young Groucho Marx.

The actor (who’s on stage a good 99% of the show’s running time, delivering Reams of dialogue and setting pace for nearly all of the stage business) is joined in a cast under the direction of the Second City veteran Dave Mowers by fellow New York- based Equity players Lucas Caleb Rooney, Jeff Galfer, Kevin Kelly and John Ahlin – all of whom play nimble foils to the savvy madman.

Alicia Roper makes a late entrance (and a big impression) as a sexy reporter; a character who seems to also stand in at times for the inquiring mind of Dario Fo.

And what of Signore Fo? His most famous play (a work that’s admittedly kind of freeform and loaded with ad-lib opportunities) has been translated into scads of languages, tampered and toyed with and ultimately turned into a vehicle with which directors around the globe have competed to one-up each other on cultural references both obvious and obscure.

Any other Nobel laureate worth their salt would hurl their medallion (or twirl in the grave) over some wiseguy interpolating a rousing chorus of “Look for the Union Label” into their script as a first-act closer – but one gets the feeling that Fo would get a fiendish rise out of the notion. Thus, this production keeps the anarchronistic in-jokes flying fast and furious, with Kenneth Lay, Halliburton, Martha Stewart, “No Child Left Behing” and even the Asbury Park Press getting name-checked along the way.

But then, one would probably guess pretty early on that we weren’t really in the ostensible Italy of 1972 by the first glimpse of Robert Pyzocha’s cattywampus Police Headquarters set; painted appropriately enough in Dunkin’ Donuts shades of pink and orange and decorated not only with boxes of the aforementioned deep-fried delights, but with portraits of both Benito Mussolini and John Ashcroft (it’s no slight to the performers to suggest that one of the biggest laughs of the evening comes from a scene change, from one floor of the building to another.)