Lloyd Evans Lloyd Evans

Night at the circus

Plus: Orson Welles and Laurence Olivier square up to each other at Southwark Playhouse in a play that is almost a triumph

issue 18 July 2015

Easy playwright to get on with, Ben Jonson. His world is simple, his tastes endearing. He likes golden-hearted swindlers and unscrupulous servants who outwit their bungling masters. Volpone, the ‘sly fox’ played by Henry Goodman, is a rich Venice merchant without a family who persuades three wealthy rivals that they stand a chance of inheriting his estate. He feigns mortal illness and accepts their tributes, or bribes, from his sickbed while secretly lampooning their folly. This is hardly the most sophisticated hoax but it’s fun to watch the slick, spruce millionaires queuing up to be despoiled of their loot.

Trevor Nunn’s up-to-date version skilfully harmonises the Jacobean and the modern. The sickbed is an intensive-care unit where Volpone wilts into his pillows, a mass of diseased wrinkles, with his frail, bird-like skull lolling against the sheets. But once the coast is clear, he leaps up, whips off his wig and gown, and strides about in a shiny purple shirt like a youthful oligarch prowling a coke-den for crumpet.

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