Neon lights, glass-panelled walls, information flashing along an LED strip, mobile phones, selfies - Ben Jonson’s 1606 play of greed and corruption is relocated to the 21st century. If the RSC were a character in a Shakespeare play, this season it would be Bottom in A Midsummer Night’s Dream. The weaver-cum-am-dram-actor promises to roar his role as lion fiercely, yet softly, so as not to frighten the ladies; the company plasters over its plays with contemporary paraphernalia, as if worried that audiences might be frightened off by the classic repertoire.
Of course, updating can be positive - unlocking meanings that have become obscured by time. Not here. In Trevor Nunn’s slickly realised production, a hotchpotch of technological gadgetry, stale modern rewritings (“crop circles”!) and forced up-to-the-minute references (“chancellor… budget… NHS”) actually exaggerate the disconnections between the play’s past and our present. The result is that Jonson’s complex, moral and savage comedy is transformed into an amusing but superficial entertainment.
Some strong performances give a sense of the more that could have been. The role of Volpone, craftily feigning illness to scam presents from would-be heirs and donning disguises to satisfy increasingly vicious desires, is delivered with virtuosity of characterisation and demonic energy by Henry Goodman. He makes Volpone’s vices sparkle so brightly they almost mask the darkness of his depravity.
Orion Lee’s Mosca is a scheming shadow of the wily master he tries to beat at his own game. Miles Richardson, Geoffrey Freshwater and Matthew Kelly are pitch-perfect in their comic credulity as lawyer, landowner and businessman prepared to destroy career, disinherit son, and prostitute wife in pursuit of Volpone’s gold. The self-centred vanity of Volpone’s fourth dupe, Lady Politic Would-Be, is made poutingly hilarious yet touchingly vulnerable by Annette McLaughlin.
Times change, but human nature doesn’t: good acting is all you need to bring a play to life.
• At the Royal Shakespeare theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 12 September
