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| Chloe Bell as Voltore and Hank Paradis as Mosca in Volpone. Photo by Shana Lincoln. |
Volpone
By Ben Jonson
Directed by J. Barret Cooper
Reviewed by Rachel White
As the lights came up on Walden’s
opening production of Volpone, I asked myself why young actors don’t do this
play more often; it’s full of fun gags and ruthless, zany characters. However, as I watched, I remembered the dark undertones, the
length and the complexity of the language. It’s a difficult play.
It is Ben Jonson’s attempt to comment on the English society of his
time, but it works for our time too; and what makes it good is the actors' commitment to its zaniness.
DJ Nash plays Volpone, the fox, a man who attempts
to increase his wealth by playing sick.
The other characters fall easily into Volpone’s trap, showing up to his
sickbed with expensive gifts in hopes of being named his heir. Nash plays Volpone with drollness and weariness that contrasts
nicely with the absurdity of the other characters. He doesn’t play for laughs, but gets them easily with the
occasional look of disgust or annoyance as the enjoyably nasty Corvino (played by
Chris Lockhart) crawls into bed with him or the parasite Mosca (Hank Paradis)
pours fake sweat over his face to make him look feverish. Volpone patiently bites the
bullet. In this way, he grounds
the play. In a sea of chaos,
Nash portrays Volpone as the calm, conniving character, dryly robbing the rich
to feed himself. The overall
feeling you get is that he’s just doing what he has to do (and they deserve it
anyway). We like him for
that.
The makeup and costumes are black box avant garde
meets Elizabethan comedy. One of
the characters, Lady Would Be Politic (Brooke Morrison), sweeps in with a dress
containing ornaments made of two young girls (Maggie Gediman, Sabrina Brown). The girls wear white face paint, rouged
cheeks and deadpan expressions. These
are Lady Would Be’s freaky ornaments as noted in the program. They are freaky,
and they seem to enjoy their freakiness, which makes them even freakier; I liked
them. Most of the actors wore
white face paint and rouge cheeks, reminiscent of the era, except for Corvino,
who looks like he has been using too much fake tanner. The effect of the makeup
is to heighten the absurdity of the characters, and it works. All of the
production is fun and unusual and a little dark. The visuals really stay with
you.
The language is tough, though, and there were times
when important information was lost as the actors struggled at times to
articulate lines. However, their
commitment to the play’s sense of fun and mischief was not to be missed.
The characters in this play are delightfully
horrific, and the actors delight in taking them to the extreme. We enjoy them like we enjoy the
characters of Seinfeld, but the
language is far richer and more beautiful. They lie, they cheat and they sell their wives to get ahead. So it seems alright in the end that
Volpone deceives them. Because,
unlike everyone else in this play, he is sly and smart, and patient – and maybe
without pretention. This makes him
a hero and an almost likable character.
The point is: We want to see him win against these fools who are blind to
everything but their own small lives and desires. He’s an old school hustler and unapologetically so. He
understands the game and he makes it works for him. It’s not a lesson in morality, but it sure is fun that
someone like that can exist.
The production succeeds in that it creates its own weird, wacky universe fueled by Jonson’s writing. Actors fall ill and have seizures – they rant and rave – and
give it their all, and in so doing remind us that this is what happens when a
culture loses perspective. As
audience members, we know that we are not like these people, and yet we
recognize them and know sadly, and laughingly, that they are of our world.
Volpone
May 10, 12, 14, 17 @ 7:30pm
May 19 @ 2pm
May 10, 12, 14, 17 @ 7:30pm
May 19 @ 2pm
Walden
Theatre
1123 Payne Street
Louisville, KY 40204
Phone: (502) 589-0084
Fax: (502) 589-0225
1123 Payne Street
Louisville, KY 40204
Phone: (502) 589-0084
Fax: (502) 589-0225
http://www.waldentheatre.org
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