​'If you want to tell people the truth make them laugh, otherwise they'll kill you.'  Oscar Wilde



Produced by European Drama Network in association with Warwick Business School The Inferno Show persenst Machiavelli The Prince of Comedy is created, written and co-directed by Simon M Woods. Originally it started out as a more conventional documentary but soon morphed into its current comedy format mixed with real and serious interviews. Written to coincide with the 500th anniversary of the writing of The Prince using Ross King's excellent biography as a source text, it became clear during its development that the format of The Inferno Show could be used to encompass a whole range of historical figures who reputations need reexamining.

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The Inferno Show is what it is, essentially slap stick in the tradition of the italian masked theatre of commedia dell'Arte. It is full of stock characters, types we can recognise in others and ourselves. Commedia became as we know it during a 16th banking crisis, so it is ideally placed today to help find a way to understand truth during the current economic crisis.



Directed by Simon M Woods and Annouchka Bayley, who previoulsy worked together on a WBS Create project 'Machiavelli and Harlequin explain the credit crisis' investigating whether comedy, through the stock characters of commedia dell'Arte could be used to understand, investigate and perhaps even regulate the folly of the extremes in banking which led to the current global economic collapse.