Holy Fool

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https://www.theatreworks.org.au/2026/holy-fool

Date Reviewed: 12/09/2026

Dear Fabio Motta,

I am not sure whether this is a theatre review or a love letter. Perhaps it is both.

I entered Theatre Works’ Explosives Factory expecting to see Holy Fool, a play. Seventy-five minutes later, I was standing in an alleyway watching a saint escape on a tiny, feathered scooter, unsure whether I had witnessed theatre, revelation or an unusually charismatic public disturbance.

Whatever it was, I couldn't get enough, Fabio.

In Holy Fool, you surrender your body to Saint Francis of Assisi and take possession of the room. You carry traces of Italian greats before you: Benigni’s elastic innocence, Fo’s irreverence and political bite. Yet the strange theatrical creature before us, Fabio, is uniquely your own.

Written and performed by you, and directed by theatre pedagogue Giovanni Fusetti, Holy Fool follows Francis from a vain young man dreaming of fame, fortune and military glory to prisoner, penitent, holy fool and radical instrument of peace.

The journey unfolds through clowning, mime, commedia dell’arte and physical theatre, drawing us directly into Francis’ world. The spontaneity is yours, Fabio, but under Fusetti’s direction these forms become the language of the work rather than mere displays of technique.

But it is your body, Fabio, that astonishes me most: an extraordinarily articulate theatrical instrument. You swell with pride, fly like an acrobat when struck by a punch, crumple in defeat and tremble with revelation. You transform from son to father, sinner to saint, animal to human, before we have time to blink. 

When you're the pope, my lips itch to kiss your delicious papal ring. 

And was that a real horse on stage, Fabio? Beneath you, an entirely dying animal materialises: buckling legs, and hot, ragged breath, and the sour tang of the creature's sweat spiralling through the air. I could see it, hear it, almost smell it; this magnificent, exhausted creature that was never there. 

And your face, Fabio, deserves separate billing. It moves from innocence to vanity, terror, bewilderment and divine ecstasy before we have managed to raise an eyebrow.

Then come the tears. Producing them may be technique for you; the emotion they stir in us is real.

You hold the room like a hypnotist. We willingly surrender our belts, shoes, socks, watches, jackets, handbags and even laptops.

In one of the evening’s strongest sequences, Francis gives away the audience’s possessions. It is playful and very funny, but beneath the comedy lurks a confronting question: who would we be without the things that protect, advertise and define us?

It is a thought worth contemplating as the man in front of me donates his watch.

“I don’t mind,” he says. “It was purchased on Temu.”

As you return it, you ask humbly, “But what would Temu think?”

We must also decide whether Francis should approach the Pope, feed a hungry stranger and trust a dangerous wolf. Volunteers are recruited into his strange new community. A lonely person is comforted. Expressions of gratitude swell into communal song.

The one-man play suddenly becomes a musical as a suspicious number of willing participants join in, as though I am surrounded by a flash mob. Many of them are Italian, including a couple of coiffured nonas you would not expect to see at a grungy warehouse theatre setting. Perhaps word has spread through Melbourne’s Italian underground that one of their own is conjuring the country’s patron saint in a former explosives factory.

I think: Italian is a language I must brush up on. (Are you listening, Joseph Lo Bianco? That's the way to get people to learn foreign languages in Australia.)

Either way, we follow when you lead us, Pied Piper-like, down the steep stairs and into the laneway, we follow; a procession of bewildered converts trailing our feathered prophet into the night.

The Explosives Factory is the ideal home for this work. Its intimacy allows you to demolish the boundary between performer and audience. We are close enough to catch every flicker of doubt and mischief, and far too close to pretend we are not involved.

Fabio, I am not sure whether I fell harder for your talent or your Francis.

Your Francis asks whether the true foolishness lies in giving everything away, or in endlessly taking from a planet that can survive without us, although we cannot survive without it.

A little more trust, Fabio

Occasionally, however, Holy Fool explains what its imagery has already communicated beautifully. The environmental litany is heartfelt, but briefly the work shifts from provocation towards sermon. Trust us to make more of those connections ourselves, and the images will reverberate more powerfully.

Audience participation can also loosen the rhythm because people are unpredictable, Fabio. On opening night, a few exchanges lingered after making their point. Some judicious trimming through the middle would sharpen the momentum towards the final transformation.

Do not worry, Fabio. I sometimes stretch and over explain things too. This theatre review-slash-love letter, for example. 

And that brings us to the ending.

People say actors live for applause. Apparently, you do not.

Before we can comprehend what has happened, you mount your tiny, feathered scooter and whizz away like a saintly Italian road hazard.

There is no curtain call. No acknowledgement of the director. No theatrical cue telling us when to clap. No opportunity for you to stand modestly beneath the lights while we rise and yell, “Bravo!”

Fabio, please. We wanted to give you a standing ovation.

Or was that the point? Francis renounces wealth, status and recognition; you renounce the applause and deny us the chance to unleash our gratitude.

Yet your disappearance is so abrupt that, as you chuff into the laneway, we are unsure whether the performance has ended.

“He’ll circle the block and come back,” one woman says.

We wait. For several seconds, we stand there, motionless, like jilted lovers, waiting for closure, or perhaps the faint putter of that ridiculous, winged scooter returning for a bow.

Come back, Fabio. Why did you leave us? In a work that asks us to turn feeling into action, you leave us with nowhere to direct our cheers for your well-played performance.

Eventually, we realise it is time to go. We leave carrying all the “what ifs” you've planted.

What if we treated compassion not as sentiment, but as action? What if we listened to lonely people without trying to fix them? What if we saw animals as fellow creatures rather than resources? What if we measured success by what we gave rather than what we accumulated? What if we were foolish enough to believe another way of living remained possible?

You make those questions joyful, absurd, tender and unsettling. Your Francis is no plaster saint, but a living contradiction: vain and humble, ridiculous and courageous, playful and politically urgent.

You perform in a tiny backstreet theatre, but your talent belongs to a grand theatrical lineage: Fo’s political mischief, Benigni’s mercurial physicality and Rowan Atkinson’s ability to make the body speak before the mouth has caught up. 

You make us laugh before uttering a word and then break our hearts when you finally do.

When I reviewed Golden Soil and Wealth for Toil, which you directed last year, I thought it wildly inventive. I gave it 4.5 stars, resisting five even though, in my heart, it hovered shamelessly around 4.75.

Now I understand.

Perhaps I was saving that final quarter-star for you.

So, dear Fabio, consider this my belated standing-O. 

Next time, please stay long enough to receive it.

Holy Fool
Written and performed by Fabio Motta
Directed by Giovanni Fusetti
Theatre Works’ Explosives Factory
9–19 September 2026

Reviewed by Mary Sinanidis