Comedy by Dario Fo and Franca Rame

From the Italian by Renate Chotjewitz-Häfner
No, not just a handful - Antonia, locked in the bathroom, wants to swallow a whole cocktail of pills this time. And then 18 suppositories on top of that. Yup - everything's already chopped up small, ready to go down her throat. Optalidon, Dolviran, Vesparex, Phanodrom.
- Why? Because her husband keeps hitting on other women! That jerk!
That jerk knows the routine.
After all, this is not his wife's first suicide attempt. He's already notified the emergency doctor. Now he's doing his best to talk her out of killing herself, using all his powers of persuasion through the closed bathroom door - and - suddenly has the idea to save the day: they need a new relationship model, a mutually/two-sided open relationship! No more reason to be jealous and depressed. Never again "I'm going to jump out the window!" Never again pills and emergency rooms. From now on there would be no more fighting. Because each party can do whatever he or she desires.

After initial hesitation, Antonia agrees to the plan. She turns her life upside down - with new self-confidence, a new figure, new clothing, new apartment and with a new, of course much younger, lover. He is a physicist, professor, nobel prize nominee even, good-looking, erotically attractive and on top of it all musically talented. In a word: superman. - All of a sudden the husband isn't as taken with his idea any more. He uses everything he's got to try to persuade her to part with her new life.

Marriage vs. open partnership. Dario Fo and Franca Rame are masters at combining humorous dialogue and slapstick. In their work they uncover the social and interpersonal power structures and re-instate the dignity of the weak and humiliated.