Carlo Boso

by Peter Jordan & Olly Crick

Routledge Performance Practitioners 2026

Commedia dell’Arte, of which Carlo Boso has been a leading exponent as actor, director and teacher for six decades, is a relatively little known genre in the UK and may consequently be thought of as either outmoded or just ‘niche’. On the continent it is neither, but a still vital and popular theatrical form.

This slim volume, one of a series provided by Routledge for students of performance, is both biography, history and handbook: the life and practice of Carlo Boso himself, a history of the Commedia form and a practical guide to its training. The authors are both Commedia actors, Peter Jordan having played under Carlo Boso for Tag Teatro of Venice.

Commedia, born out of the Carnival tradition, has a 450 year history and is credited with reintroducing a secular and professional form of theatre into Europe for the first time since the demise of Greek and Roman theatre. Its actors (from the beginning both male and female) wear the leather half-mask and enjoy direct communication with the audience; there is no ‘fourth wall’. Dialogue is largely improvised which ensures the primacy of the actor – so no ‘auteur’ directors here either! In Boso’s own words Commedia expresses the age-old contest ‘between the love of power and the power of love’, at the same time reflecting and critiquing contemporary life experiences.

Is this a book for the general reader? Perhaps, though it is aimed more at the serious student. And at a recommended price of £39.99 it is hardly a stocking filler. With material assembled from various sources, and two authors, it can be repetitive, but it reads fairly well nonetheless. But Routledge might have ensured that its illustrations, all bar the front cover printed in monochrome, were better served.

Andrew Hilton

Founder & Artistic Director of Shakespeare at the Tobacco Factory, 1999-2017