It should be a recipe for a delightfully subversive evening: D.C.’s own talented commedia dell’arte troupe, Faction of Fools, performing a sly comedy by none other than Machiavelli, reinterpreting his classic satire The Mandrake with commedia characters and big-nosed masks. Sadly, however, despite all the talent put into it, this production ends up being sunk by one simple thing: it’s just not all that engaging or funny.
Faction of Fools has put on hilarious hit shows in the past (including their “Tales of” series at the last two Fringe festivals), so it seems Nerida Newbigin’s adaptation of the Italian original is to blame here. Needlessly long amounts of time are spent on exposition that we don’t need, considering that the story is so familiar: a wealthy young man attempts to sneak his way into the bed of a lovely young woman by hoodwinking his way past her old, buffoonish husband. Hilarity ensues (or it should).
Some buildup is to be expected in classic comedies like this, but the script provides almost no payoff — no real set pieces, no worthy wordplay, a rare sex pun here and there. This is too bad, because as Shakespeare Theatre has shown us, it is definitely possible to conjure high jollity out of a centuries-old work. The most entertaining bits in The Mandrake are those added in by Faction of Fools (as identified by the program), including wordless interludes that show off the company’s knack for nimble, rapid-fire physical comedy.
The cast does what they can to milk comedy from the dry material. In particular, the show’s director Matthew R. Wilson, who also plays schemer-for-hire and center-of-attention Ligurio, is able to wring out some laughs with the tiniest of sideways glances and vocal inflections. Gallaudet students Charlie Ainsworth and Miranda Medugno, as silent servants, are adorable in their romance (which was, again, added in by the company). The rest of the cast are all winsome and watchable, but there is only so much they can do.
The set, by Daniel Flint, is very nearly worth the price of admission on its own; its forced-perspective view scrunches an entire Italian piazza into the medium-sized stage, and packs seemingly a dozen doors and secret windows in besides.
It may be that, while Machiavelli’s original was sharply satirical in its time, it has no edge left today. The company attempts to fill with light comedy those scenes that no longer have dramatic or ironic power in them, but there is not enough humor there to support this, and the results wear thin quickly. Alternately, it may have just been an off night for the company, since they had a smallish audience to work with, and, given the considerable talent present onstage, a better energy could be all that’s needed to make the show considerably more entertaining – you could certainly do worse than giving it a shot.
The Mandrake runs through October 8 at Gallaudet University. Tickets are available online.
