Tom Basden’s Accidental Death Of An Anarchist heads to the West End

Starring Daniel Rigby and Tony Gardner

Tom Basden’s adaptation of The Accidental Death of an Anarchist is to transfer to the West End.

The new version of Dario Fo’s classic farce will open in preview at the Theatre Royal Haymarket on June 12, following successful seasons at the Lyric Hammersmith Theatre and Sheffield Crucible.

It stars comic Daniel Rigby and Lead Balloon and Last Tango in Halifax star Tony Gardner.

Producers say comedian Basden has given the 1970 script ‘a bang up-to-the-minute reworking’ to take aim at the ineptitude of the police force, ruthlessly exposing the corruption and incompetence of the institution.

A four-star Guardian review of the Sheffield run said: ‘Daniel Rigby as the Maniac brings the dazzlingly funny script roaringly to life.’

The Spectator called the Hammersmith run ‘flawless’ and Rigby ‘a tour de force’ with ‘the explosive, feral energy of Adrian Edmondson, which he tempers with a cool, knowing intelligence and a polished external demeanour’.

And in its four-star review, Time Out said ‘Rigby is terrific as The Maniac in Tom Basden’s wickedly funny contemporary remake of the Dario Fo classic’.

The play is based on a real-life incident from 1969 in which anarchist Giuseppe Pinelli died after falling from the fourth-floor window of the police station where he was being interrogated over a terrorist bomb that killed 17 people in Milan.

The new version is directed by Daniel Raggett and staged by Playful Productions. Full casting will be announced soon. It will run at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until September 9.

Tickets are available here.