The playwright vs. the prime minister.

Dario Fo, the radical, Nobel Prize-winning Italian playwright and actor, has finally set his satirical sights on Italy's notorious prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The result is the hilarious and surreal play Two-Headed Anomaly. Fo not only wrote and directs the play, he also has the lead part.

At the outset, we learn that Berlusconi has just had an emergency operation. He now shares the brain of Russian President Vladimir Putin, who was killed by Chechen terrorists. In a scene that is vintage Fo, the terrorists gun down Putin as he and Berlusconi ready themselves for bed by practicing karate in matching kimonos. With Putin dead the play moves into even more farcical territory. Fo portrays Berlusconi, now with Putin's brain, as a two-and-a-half foot dwarf. To hysterical effect, Fo stands in a trench behind the stage with his arms hidden in pinstripe pants, his hands placed inside black shoes.

Fo, who has fully recovered from a stroke he suffered some years back and is as crisp and engaging as ever at the age of seventy-seven, concocted the absurd premise after listening to Berlusconi praise Putin for his violent suppression of Chechen rebels. Putin and Berlusconi have forged an unusual relationship, one that seems to transcend typical diplomatic interactions between world leaders.

A large portion of Two-Headed Anomaly revolves around the Italian leader and his wife, Veronica Lario, played by Franca Rame, Fo's partner in life and art. These scenes give the play its greatest force. Berlusconi is depicted as a petulant adolescent who is constantly in need of approval while Lario is like a stern mother figure humoring her unruly, mischievous child with patronizing words. Fo's characterization of the emotionally stunted Berlusconi cleverly plays on the largerthan-life view the prime minister has of himself. Fo mocks the media oligarch's fondness for using crude and reactionary rhetoric to denounce those who oppose him politically. Berlusconi has more than once described his political rivals' critiques as "persecution" similar to the "trials of Jesus Christ on the cross."

While Two-Headed Anomaly often leaves the audience laughing uncontrollably, the play smartly tackles a serious concern in both Italian cultural life and politics. Fo fears, as many do in Italy and throughout Europe, that Berlusconi's political power, combined with his vast wealth and controlling interest in more than 80 percent of the Italian media, presents a conflict of interest that undermines democracy and leads to fraud, censorship, and the suppression of basic rights. Dogged by scandals, allegations of judicial bribery, and investigations for corruption, Berlusconi seems to be a real life version of Fo's fictional buffoon. But to dismiss Berlusconi as a clown, as many do, is a grave mistake. "Berlusconi has his hands in everything," Fo told reporters after a performance. "Italy is really tragic, we've never been so low."

When Silvio Berlsuconi first served as Italy's prime minister in 1994, his government lasted only seven months as it crumbled due to his indictment for tax fraud. His first tenure as Italy's leader was, in no uncertain terms, a farce. Returning to rule a mammoth media empire with his tail tucked neatly between his legs was not Berlusconi's intention. And in a country that has had more than fifty governments since World War II, Berlusconi declared that only he could turn Italy's fortunes around. After forging a tenuous coalition among the three major Italian rightwing parties and amassing control of Italy's media, Berlusconi became Italy's prime minister in 2001 for a second time. He now is the country's second-longest-serving head of state since his political antecedent Benito Mussolini.

The similarities between Mussolini and Berlusconi have received much attention in Italy, thanks in large part to Berlusconi's continued public praise and unabashed admiration of the fascist leader. By contrast, Fo has spent a lifetime fighting fascism. As a young student at the Bera Art Academy in Milan, he decided to leave and join his parents in the resistance, where he helped smuggle Jewish scientists and British prisoners of war into Switzerland and cared for wounded partisans. Shortly after the war's end, Fo's interest in a new "popular stage" grew into an outlet for his deepening radical politics. He began to write at a prodigious clip, soon finding success. With the increased attention came intense scrutiny of his politics, which led to death threats and repeated attempts at censorship that continue to dog him.

During the late 1960s and throughout the 1970s, Fo fully realized his dream of a "popular theater, a literature, an artistic expression that spoke to everyone and is relevant," as he described in his book Tricks of the Trade. This period in Italy was one of incredible political turmoil and instability. From judicial corruption to government-sanctioned murders of leftists, Italy was reeling. During this time, Fo created some of the most intelligent and dynamic theater of the twentieth century. His achievements include Guerra di popolo Chile (The People's War in Chile), Non si paga, non si paga! (Can't pay? Won't pay!), and Morte accidente di un anarchio (Accidental Death of an Anarchist).

Two-Headed Anomaly represents Fo at his best, placing him in the tradition of Moliere and Ruzzante Beolco, the father of the commedia dell'arte. While accepting the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1997, Fo described the special kinship with Moliere and Beolco, who both were mocked and censored by the leading men of letters of their times. They "were despised for bringing onto the stage the everyday life, joys, and desperation of the common people; the hypocrisy and arrogance of the high and mighty; and the incessant injustice," he said. "And their major, unforgivable fault was this: In telling these things, they made people laugh. Laughter does not please the mighty."

And the mighty in Italy are not pleased with Fo and the success of Two-Head Anomaly, which is on a sold-out tour of Italy. "There is an Italian comedian who performs from inside the trench," Berlusconi said in a recent interview, "to create the impression of a devilish dwarf." Government officials tried to censor the play by demanding that Fo hand over the text for their review. Berlusconi's Forza Italia party initiated a lawsuit against Fo and is seeking more than a million dollars in damages caused by "unfounded personal attacks." It described the play as "not satire but persecution."

Fo countered that he and Rame "could not sit by and watch what is happening in Italy," comparing the present situation to that addressed in Accidental Death of an Anarchist when leftists were thrown to their deaths from police windows. "My satire is a paradox, and it is grotesque," says Fo, just like the political situation that grips Italy today.

Antonino D'Ambroso, filmmaker and writer, is the director of the La Lutta NMC an independent media and production organization based in New York City. In December, Nation Books/Avalon Press will publish his book, "Let Fury Have the Hour: The Politics of Joe Strummer."