Volpone

Volpone is a Venetian merchant whose name, translated from Italian, means “clever fox.” He pretends to be on his deathbed to fool the hangers-on coveting his inheritance. Volpone’s clever servant spreads a rumor that only the bed of a beautiful young woman can cure his ailing master. The greedy but naïve Corvino agrees to “lend” his young wife after being assured that, in return, he will become the sole heir to the fortune... Juozas Miltinis Drama Theatre looks back at its history to revisit legendary productions with a fresh perspective. One of these is the classic comedy “Volpone” by Shakespeare’s contemporary Ben Jonson, interpreted in 1941 by the young director Juozas Miltinis. It is interesting that Juozas Miltinis himself played the scheming Volpone in that production. “Volpone” is Jonson’s most famous play, sharply satirizing such human flaws as greed, selfishness, and enslavement to passions. The play’s popularity rests on its comic situations and characters, in which the masks of Italian improvised comedy, commedia dell’arte, are clearly recognizable. Director Aidas Giniotis—Lithuania’s foremost expert on commedia dell’arte and a master of comic genres—has brought the play back to life at Juozas Miltinis Drama Theatre. Perhaps it will seem that, despite technological and other progress, human flaws and weaknesses remain the same? The project is funded by the Ministry of Culture of the Republic of Lithuania. In 2021, the production “Volpone” won the Audience Prize at the 37th Professional Theatre Festival “We Perform for the Farmers” in Rokiškis. In 2021, the creative team of the production received three awards at the 12th Dalia Tamulevičiūtė Professional Theatre Festival in Varėna. In 2022, at the international theatre festival COM·MEDIA in Alytus, “Volpone” was chosen as the audience’s best production.