The Return of Pinocchio
by Richard Nelson

“Nelson’s brief play takes place in a tiny Italian village after the Allied victory in World War II.

This village is the birthplace of Pinocchio, the puppet who became a real boy—a fact advertised on a huge billboard decorated with the toy boy’s famous smiling face.

But the billboard is dilapidated and defaced now; and the pretty town we remember from the opening frames of Walt Disney’s movie has become a cesspool of corruption and poverty.

Geppetto has been knocked off by black marketeers; Jiminy Cricket is squashed by a bored townsperson before our eyes; theft, abortion, and murder are common occurrences.

Pinocchio, now an all-too-human grown-up U S O entertainer (like so many one-time movie stars), arrives at his birthplace with pockets full of U S dollars and cigarettes and dreams about America, where anyone can become a millionaire.

Once easy prey for wicked foxes and donkey-boys, Pinocchio is still a gullible naïf, and he is soon easily victimized by various villagers.

But underneath his easygoing exterior, he’s also a dark and frightening figure capable, it is implied, of cruel violence.

The script’s peak is a long monologue in which Pinocchio tells a village girl about the American dream: becoming a millionaire.

All you need is to be ruthless, dishonest, and hardworking.

Pinocchio’s lecture includes tips on working the night shift (so you can sleep when no one’s looking), loan-sharking, cutthroat business practices, secret takeovers, and insurance fraud.

This information is delivered with good-natured casualness as Pinocchio sweeps a barroom floor to pay off his debt—except, we notice, he doesn’t really do any work, but spends all his time spinning his vision of success American-style…a study in ironic contrast between the surface brightness of Pinocchio’s image and the underlying darkness of his reality.”Albert Williams, Chicago Reader