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Faithful infidelity

Machiavelli's princely bawdiness is well staged

By Steffen Silvis
Staff Writer, The Prague Post
December 19th, 2007 issue

COURTESY PHOTO
Chaste Makes Waste. Tomáš Pavelka and Martin Sitta in an energetic staging of Machiavelli's robust comedy.
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La Mandragola (The Mandrake)

By Niccolo Machiavelli
Directed by Daniel Hrbek
When: Thursday Dec. 20 at 7
Where: Švandovo Divadlo
Tickets: 120—260 Kč
With English surtitles

Earlier this year Švandovo Divadlo seemed to have staged a coup by luring famed commedia dell’arte artist Antonio Fava from Italy to direct one of his own pieces of commedia, Bomby, prachy a láska (Bombs, Money and Love). Having lavished both money and love on the project, the theater was finally left just holding a bomb.
The problem was that the physical dexterity and improvisational speed demanded by commedia was often beyond the classically trained Švandovo ensemble, with the exception of the company’s best comic actors, Jaroslav Šmídt and Matěj Hádek. The commedia style felt imposed upon the actors, who, though struggling valiantly to put the show across, could not help but let their sweating desperation seep from behind their masks. The evening was interminable.
With La Mandragola (The Mandrake) by Niccolo Machiavelli, Švandovo decided to take on commedia dell’arte’s next of kin, commedia erudita. As the name proclaims, the erudita is a “learned comedy,” employing a full script (real dell’arte only uses scenarios), literary allusions, and the three unities of time, place and action that the Renaissance mistakenly believed were preordained by Aristotle.
The father of this style of theater was the poet Ariosto, though it reached its riotous apogee with the still jaw-dropping scurrility of Pietro Aretino, who died, legend has it, while laughing at a dirty joke.
The classic of the genre is, however, Machiavelli’s play, which managed not only to distill his philosophy that ends justify their means (as infamously stated in his The Prince), but managed to do so within the framework of a knockdown, ribald comedy.
The plot could be pulled from Plautus: A young grandee, Callimaco, returns to his native Tuscany from years in Paris, after learning of a beautiful woman, Lucrezia, whom he has decided to bed. But two things stand between Callimaco’s lustful plans: the lady’s husband and the lady’s virtue.
These obstructions to his desires are mere bagatelles to the vulpine Callimaco, and he hatches an incredible scheme with the equally wiley Ligurio to conquer the fair Lucrezia with her old, foolish husband Nicia’s blessing.
Nicia is desperate for a male heir, and is easily talked into believing that Callimacho, impersonating an eminent doctor, has the perfect solution. They must find a man who will be forced to take a love potion that will not only force him to impregnate Lucrezia, but will immediately kill the man afterwards. This lethal Viagra is made from the root of the toxic mandrake, that famed screaming plant that sprouts from the spilled semen of hanged men.
Needless to say, the potion contains no mandrake, and the sacrificial sirer will be Callimaco himself in a second disguise. Nicia couldn’t be more helpful in lending a hand to his own cuckolding.
As for Lucrezia’s renowned purity, Callimaco and Ligurio will swiftly draft both the lady’s confessor, Frate Timoteo, and her own mother, Sostrata, into their plan. In La Mandragola, it takes a village to corrupt a good wife, and open fraud is found superior to moralistic posturing, if not religion itself.
The good news is that the Švandovo crew are much more at home in erudita than dell’arte, and this production of Machiavelli’s bawdy primer in amorality is completely enjoyable.
Director Daniel Hrbek, who played Fava’s assistant in Bomby, prachy a láska, and who then failed to plumb the depths of František Langer’s excellent play Periferie, has done an excellent job of getting to the heart of Machiavelli’s ironic farce. He overplays the very opening with some amateur operahouse dumbshow, but once his actors are speaking the production takes flight.
Though the fine Matěj Hádek is missing from this cast, Jaroslav Šmídt is here as Ligurio, or “Ligur” in the Czech translation. Šmídt is a smart, consummate clown, and he energetically commands the stage as the quick-witted plotter.
Though he lacks lightness (which came in handy for his strong, menacing work in Švandovo’s production of Shepard’s The Late Henry Moss), Tomáš Pavelka makes Callimaco, or “Kallimach,” seductively dark. The lithe Pavelka is, as always, a cat crouched for some sporting violence, perfect for a Machiavellian seducer.
Company stalwart Stanislav Šárský is also perfect as the fatuous egoist Nicia, or “Pan Mikula,” while Eva Leimbergerová’s “Lukrecie” is wanton ruin at its most satisfied. Martin Sitta, Apolena Veldová and Milan Kačmarčik ably complete the cast.
If Bomby, prachy a láska lacked fidelity, this raucous salute to infidelity more than makes up for it.

Steffen Silvis can be reached at ssilvis@praguepost.com


Other articles in Night & Day (19/12/2007):

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