Night at the circus

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. The transformation is hilarious. Volpone’s costumes and hair-piece by Stephen Brimson Lewis are minor miracles. Goodman also doubles as Scoto, a travelling pedlar, who dupes incautious buyers with fake medicines. He’s supported by a wily chief-of-staff, Mosca (Orion Lee, under-powered), and by a coterie of misfits including a dwarf, a eunuch and a hermaphrodite. Julian Hoult, as the emasculated Castrone, is terrific value.

All in all, it’s a rollicking night out but it’s more like circus entertainment than a dramatic investigation of the human heart. Jonson is no psychologist. He has scant interest in women, families, romance, politics or religious sentiment and he clings close to the low-life mischief-makers he loves. Perhaps Goodman overdominates this production. When he exits the stage he leaves an expectant vacancy behind him.