A riotous farce about rising prices, political absurdity, and what happens when ordinary people decide they’ve had enough.

First staged in Italy during the economic turbulence of the 1970s, We Can’t Pay? We Won’t Pay! follows a group of working-class women who spontaneously revolt against supermarket price hikes by “self-reducing” their groceries — in other words, walking out without paying. 

Written by Italian satirist and later Nobel Prize winner Dario Fo, the play blends political theatre with slapstick comedy. Beneath the absurd disguises and frantic misunderstandings lies a sharp critique of inflation, authority, and the everyday pressures placed on working people.

Fast, funny, and politically mischievous, it remains one of Fo’s most widely performed plays — a reminder that sometimes the only sane response to an irrational system is sticking it and laughing about it.