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Volpone
Presented by the BBC's World Theatre series. Broadcast June 16, 1959. Produced by Stephen Harrison. Production Design by Reece Pemberton. Adaptation by Donald Wolfit. With Donald Wolfit (Vopone), John Wynyard (Mosca), Erik Chitty (Corbaccio), Esmond Knight (Corvino), Carl Bernard (Voltore), Jane Griffiths (Celia), Bernard Brown (Bonario), John Wentworth (Sir Politick Would-Be), Dennis Edwards (Peregrine), Aubrey Woods (Castrone), John Southworth (Androgyno), Thomas Hard (Nano), Philip Holles (Notario), Keith Pyott (1st Magistrate), Robert Webber (2nd Magistrate), Terence Soall (3rd Magistrate).
The production history of Ben Jonson's Volpone can be divided roughly into two periods: before and after Donald Wolfit first assayed the role of the stage's most notorious faker. As Mira Assaf and Richard Dutton note, from 1938 Wolfit dominated the role for some twenty years, "monopoliz[ing] the market for Volpone for such a long time that it was inevitably an influence (either positive or negative) on everything that followed for some time" (6). Wolfit's Volpone toured the world in a number of different incarnations linked by a strong emphasis on the play's animal imagery, a tendency to farce, and a grandstanding, scenerychewing performance from Wolfit himself "that selfishly eclipsed the other members of the cast," whose roles were often severely cut (Assaf and Dutton 7). The long shadow cast by Wolfit's ownership of the role is still evident in the play's stage histories.
For students of the play's performance history, Wolfit's performance is happily preserved in a 1959 BBC television version, adapted by Wolfit himself and produced by Stephen Harrison. While never released commercially, this complete 92-minute production survives in reasonable condition (the visual quality better than the audio) and offers a fascinating vision of Wolfit's production reimagined for television, combining a theatrical sensibility in its approach to space with a camera design intent on maximising Wolfit's own command of the frame. In this Volpone, unlike the more recent Stage on Screen production, which keeps a critical distance from its lead, Volpone extends his charismatic control to the camera, controlling and shaping the viewer's gaze.
The Michael Macowan production that featured Wolfit's debut as Volpone was notable for being the first to emphasise strongly the animal types figured in the central characters, and Harrison's screen version makes clear even in its opening credits these associations,...