Tuesday, March 10, 1998
Great performances make Jonson’s ‘Volpone’ sparkle
THEATER Quick pace may overcome audience but humor gets
through
By Michael Gillette
Daily Bruin Contributor
If Ben Jonson’s Volpone isn’t the nastiest rogue to ever command
the stage, he’s certainly the most actively greedy character to
ever win an audience’s sympathy.
When we meet Volpone, he’s in the midst of carrying out one of
the oddest plans in all of world literature. In a scheme to win his
neighbor’s riches, he spreads the rumor that he’s dying and plays
ill on his couch while his knave Mosca receives the town’s
gentlemen. These gentlemen bring Volpone favors, such as bags of
gold and giant diamonds in the hope that unmarried, childless
Volpone will make them his sole heir.
This plan wins us over for two reasons. First, while Volpone in
his planning is low and deceptive, the plans of the gentlemen he’s
duping are even more low and deceptive. Second, and more important,
Volpone’s plan involves a performance, just like that of Richard
III. And as Shakespeare and Jonson knew, performances are why we go
to the theater.
The people at the Noise Within theater in Glendale, where
"Volpone" is playing through May 17, know this as well. Not only do
they have Volpone couch at center stage where every one of actor
Dan Kern’s fiendish reactions to the goings on can be seen, but
they have an audience of actors dressed as crows perched above the
stage, squawking at the appropriate times and making sound effects
to punctuate the play’s action.
This touch is typical of director Art Manke’s production, in
which wit and speed are not in short supply. This style places
tremendous trust in the cast, who are expected not only to carry
off a dense Elizabethan text at a fast clip, but to infuse it with
an energy that competes with endless rollicking set chases and
amusing side diversions as well.
That the production succeeds is testament both to the superb
pool of acting talent in the Noise Within’s company, and to the
generous, freewheeling nature of Jonson’s text. Like his
contemporary, Shakespeare, Jonson created spacious plays filled
with creative invention and possessing a wonderful elasticity, so
that when the grotesque English knight Sir Politic Would Be, around
whom the play’s sub-plot revolves, pulls out a giant imitation
tortoise shell to hide beneath when imperiled, the gesture seems
not at all out of place, as it might in a drama by Jean Racine.
At the center of Manke’s production are two outstanding
performances. As Volpone, Dan Kern shines both in the early
faux-invalid scenes, where in a single he creates the necessary
conspiracy between the actor and audience on which the play hinges,
and in disguise about town, where he summons a volcanic charisma
that takes the audience by surprise.
The second comes from Francois Giroday in the role of Mosca,
Volpone’s knave. Giroday puts an entire arsenal of actorly tricks –
gestures, voices, expressions – to sinister use, and the effect is
dazzling. The payoff, of course, comes at the end, when the
self-proclaimed parasite bears his teeth.
If there is any complaint to be voiced about the show, it’s that
it goes so fast at times that it leaves the audience behind. The
production certainly does not fail to bring this classic work to
life, the superb Noise Within company never has a problem with
that, but here one feels that the wonderful normally by the
performers and the audience at their show’s is missing, and that
it’s the performers who are having all the fun.
THEATER: "Volpone" by Ben Jonson runs through May 17 at A Noise
Within, 234 South Brand Blvd. Glendale. Tickets are $22 – $27
general, $18 – $22 students. Call (818) 546-1924.