Word: mosca
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First there is the problem of age -- a problem which director John Munger has found no solution for whatsoever. His Volpone, played by Peter Goldberg, could possibly be pushing 30, but that's it. The parasite Mosca, played by Chris Baker, looks unmistakably teenage (he even has a preppie haircut to match). Voltore and Corvino, who need only appear verging on middle...
...aged Corbaccio, it is true, has an elderly look about him. But the hair-spray and bent condition with which Alec Walker achieves his decay have fake written all over them. Besides, Corbaccio really looks the right age for Volpone, Volpone for Mosca, and Mosca for the young Bonario, who, as played by Jim Brook, might be a recent graduate of Miss Hewett's Nursery School for the Self-Conscious Aesthete...
Lovingly restored plantation house, possibly the oldest on the Mississippi. Chef Nick Mosca serves all the New Orleans standards, plus some dishes of his own, notably jumbo shrimp in a hot, garlicky wine sauce...
...played up the broad comedy in Zweig's dialogue. Many gestures underline the characters' faults; for instance, "the dove" Colomba, a hypocritically pious and hypocritically faithful wife affectionately twirls her husband's hair into horns while avowing her undying love. Even the blocking is significant. In an opening scene, Mosca lies at his master's feet while they both drink a toast to Volpone; in the final scene, "the fox" grovels before Mosca...
...Zweig's Mosca poses serious problems for any actor: he must be portrayed straightforwardly in a cast of caricatured characters. After finessing a series of unsavory plots, he must win both the audience's admiration and their acceptance of his reformation. The boyish energy and joie de vivre which John Cunningham brings to the part help to solve these problems: he clearly enjoys his villainy because he enjoys quick-witted plots, particularly at the expense of villains, rather than because he shares the other charactrs' vices. Cunningham understandably has trouble with the rather mawkish conclusion, which Carnovsky has adapted from...