ABSTRACT
Post-colonial appropriation of Jonson in Australia was matched the same year within the metropolis by a daring appropriation of Volpone as Flesh Fly by Graeae Theatre Company for the Disabled (Oval House, 1996). The programme actually defined their objective as a conscious ‘abduction’ of a classic in the wake of their success in staging Jarry’s Ubu. The marginalised were given creative voice in a complete rethinking of the comedy; and this point was quickly established by the director’s decision to present the whole play from the perspective of Volpone’s servants, Nano, Androgyno and Castrone (the sexually and physically marginalised). Rarely has the imagery of disease and degeneration in the text carried such weight, which only made the counter-theme of the increasingly manic cerebral inventions of the characters seem that much more desperate and absurd. The wheelchair-bound Nabil Shaban playing Volpone opined that, as a disabled actor impersonating an able-bodied man pretending to be disabled and afflicted, he could push his comic invention to levels of the grotesque and surreal that no able-bodied performer in the role would dare to do. Consequently, the sheer physicality of the action in depicting a mass rush for wealth was marked. There were other gains, particularly in the playing of the two main female roles by a deaf actor (Neil Fox). It is a tradition with Graeae that the performance is accompanied by a Sign Language Interpreter who is integrated into the action and not marginalised, as in conventional theatre, to the side of the stage. It was therefore a considerable surprise when this hitherto mute figure suddenly spoke aloud Celia’s words even as she signed them, while Fox mimed exquisitely Celia’s plight. Fox transformed himself deftly into Lady Politic Would-be with a minor adjustment to his costume; his miming in this role became grosser, caricatured and more rapid, while the voice was now provided by the other female member of the cast, Mandy Colleran, who adopted a thick Mancunian accent and an unstoppable volubility. This casting decision incisively problematised the whole issue of male constructions of the feminine both in the play and in Renaissance theatre practice: women as the silenced presences whose voices are disturbingly ventriloquised. Equally disturbing was the performance of Jamie Beddard, whose speech and movement are affected by cerebral palsy, as Corbaccio. The text makes fun of the ways Corbaccio’s age and near-senility affect his speech, sight and movement, which Mosca and Volpone satirise with cruel glee. Here it was
less easy for the able-bodied members of the audience to laugh (the cruelty was more apparent than the fun), though the disabled members of the audience found his performance uproarious, as if they had earned the right to laugh. Here that factionalising of the audience which Jonson frequently promotes came forcefully alive to one’s awareness, causing one to question the grounds on which one might laugh. A theatre for the marginalised had here appropriated Jonson, had creatively interrogated the text and had found from a distinct and unusual perspective the means to reinstate elements of danger within the performance, particularly for able-bodied spectators.1
