When Marieke Hardy’s adaptation of Dario Fo and Franca Rame’s anarchic farce Sotto Paga! Non Si Paga! premiered at the Sydney Opera House in March 2020, all the foyer talk was of the recent catastrophic bushfires and the looming Covid-19 pandemic. A couple of weeks later, the latter closed this show halfway through its season.
Four years later – and no doubt hoping to make good on the considerable investment that went into it – Sydney Theatre Company has revived No Pay? No Way! against the background of soaring rents, the cost-of-living crisis and the news that the government is attempting to address supermarket profiteering. In this way No Pay? No Way! feels very 2024, even though it was written in the mid-1970s, when Italy’s economy and government were a bin fire of inflation and corruption.
