About the work
Offene Zweierbeziehung (Italian: Coppia aperta, quasi spalancata) is a tragicomedy by Dario Fo and Franca Rame that premiered in Milan in 1983. It is among the couple's most widely performed plays and has been available in German translation from Rotbuch Verlag since 1997.
Plot
Antonia, married for years, suffers from her husband's affairs and is close to suicide when he proposes an open relationship — initially open only to him. She agrees to the experiment, develops her own goals and a new relationship outside the marriage, prompting her husband to react with jealousy that exposes the double standard behind his own proposal.
Cultural significance
In the 1980s the play became one of Fo and Rame's most widely staged works internationally; according to Fo it reached around 700 productions worldwide. In Germany it ran simultaneously in around 30 theatres and remains one of the couple's best-known plays about the double standards between men and women.