April 2, 2007

Machiavelli's Play The Mandrake Opens April 5; style influenced the comedy of Robin Williams

(St. Mary's City, MD) March 26, 2007 - Niccolò Machiavelli's comedy, The Mandrake, opens Thursday, April 5 at 8 p.m. and runs through Sunday, April 15 in the Bruce Davis Theater on the St. Mary's College of Maryland (SMCM) campus. Produced by the SMCM Department of Theater, Film, and Media Studies and directed by faculty member Merideth Taylor, The Mandrake performs April 5-7 and 12-14 at 8 p.m. and April 7 and 15 at 2 p.m. Ticket prices are $4 or $6. To make reservations, call the theater box office at 240-895-4243 or e-mail boxoffice@smcm.edu.

In The Mandrake, Machiavelli uses Italian theater traditions, building his comedy around a single question: Who will win the love and the bed of the youthful beauty, Lucrezia? Will it be her rich, old lawyer of a husband, Nicia, or the handsome young upstart, Callimaco?

In what Taylor describes as a "cheerful, lively, and very, very funny translation" of the play by comic actor and playwright Wallace Shawn, The Mandrake stems from the commedia dell'arte tradition, a fifteenth-century Italian improvisational theater. Its influence was wide-reaching and can even be seen in contemporary comedians like Robin Williams.

Commedia performances were based on a repertory of stock situations: adultery or other socially taboo love intrigues, clever tricks to get money or outwit some simpleton, old men married to young women, conniving parasites, or usually some combination of the above. In turn, these scenarios involved stock characters, like the old doctor or lawyer, the young lovers, the penny-pinching merchant, wily widows, the braggart soldier, and servants.

Taylor says, "Commedia's underlying spirit of irreverence, parody, and irony is in keeping with Machiavelli and his darkly comic view of society" and of human nature.
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"Both commedia and The Mandrake are basically subversive. The rich and powerful, and the institu-tions they represent, are mercilessly attacked. Social order is upended. In the case of The Mandrake, however, scoundrels and villains, and the innocent, too, win out in some way in the end. Cynical? Sure."

Free parking is available within walking distance to Montgomery Hall in either the Somerset Gym parking lot or in the adjacent visitor's parking lot. Both lots are located on East Fisher Road, off Mat-tapany Road.

St. Mary's College of Maryland is ranked one of the best liberal arts colleges in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, The Princeton Review and Kiplinger's. With roots going back to 1840, SMCM is the state's only public honors college, offering the academic excellence of a top private college with the openness and affordability of public education.