The Mandrake (Niccoló Machiavelli, Trans. Wallace Shawn)

It’s often said, and I think frequently incorrectly said, that comedy doesn’t age well, just as it’s said that comedy relies on surprise, a statement which I think applies a part-to-whole fallacy. There is plenty of comedy which is timeless and plenty which can be enjoyed again and again, only we’re not in agreement about what that comedy is.

I’ve often thought, and indeed wanted to make a show about, my thesis that comedy relies on expectation, in order to subvert it, and that when you remove comedy too far from its original context you run a greater risk of disassociating it from an audience which will naturally make the expectations that the author expects. This can be done with time, but it can also be done with space (from country to country) or ideology.

Unfortunately for me Machiavelli’s The Mandrake seems to have been hit by all three: showcasing Italian prejudices, in a Renaissance time period, with his philosophy leaves me occasionally cold. It doesn’t help that the translation beat me to life by a decade and a half and Wallace Shawn doesn’t tickle my funny bone at the best of times anyway.

That being said, there is some timelessness and some humor in the show, just not enough to bowl me over in the way that a classical work often must do to breach my usual preferences.

Rich sod Callimaco comes to Florence in search of a beautiful woman, Lucrezia, only to find her married to an old fool. He enlists the help of many friends and hangers-on to hatch a ridiculous plot all of whom employ, in small or great part, deception to try to achieve their own ends. By the end of the play everyone is happy in the lies they’ve crafted for themselves and we could take this to mean that life is unaccountably dreadful, or that a little lying to craft one’s own universe is a good thing, provided it’s not going to come back and bite you.

The actual plot, which is pure farce, is that a friend-of-a-friend will posture Callimaco as a fertility doctor, and Lucrezia’s husband Nicia, will seek him out since they want children. Callimcao will provide a cure-all with the understanding that unfortunately the first man who has sex with Lucrezia afterward will absorb the poisonous properties of the active ingredient, the Mandrake root, and will soon die.

Therefore, the group of them must find a poor young fool that no one will miss, kidnap him to have sex with Lucrezia, then proceed forward as though nothing has happened. Naturally Callimaco will disguise himself as the boy and Nizia will be party to his own cuckolding. Some more confederates are necessary to get Lucrezia to agree to the (false) plan, but she does, and they do, and it happens, and lots of money moves around, and like I said by the end everyone seems reasonably happy with what’s happened, as far as they know.

For her part, Lucrezia, once the plot is revealed, takes it as God’s will that so many different movers would conspire to pull this off.

It’s a trifling story, one made more difficult by today’s sexual politics, but is by no means a poor option if you’re in the market for something centuries old.

As a Producer
The styling of the writing is actually quite close to something I might do myself, only the language and the topics are barriers to entry and so I’d pass on this show for Pronoia. I need to keep my eye on this Machiavelli though, he might be going places.

As a Designer
Like any classical work these days I’m sure the script just becomes a veneer for the director to put his spin on things, and in that way the script opens a lot of possibilities in that it asks for very little to be seen or heard. There is a small monograph at the back of my edition which talks about the design and approach the director who did the first production of this translation took, which was intellectually interesting, but not compelling enough to divulge here.

Basically though, it allows for a lot of different choices choices a person (not I) could make.

As a Writer
I don’t think I’m going to pull anything specifically from this work: there’s no great secret or lesson lurking behind this old translation of an old farce, except the one that is always useful to reinforce: if you commit to anything hard enough, no matter how silly it may be, it can yield thoroughly entertaining work. Best not to try to cut yourself off at the knees.