The New York Times-20080124-Dashing Through a Sex Comedy by Machiavelli -Yes- That Machiavelli-- -Review-

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Dashing Through a Sex Comedy by Machiavelli (Yes, That Machiavelli); [Review]

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Just because Broadway has cornered the market on moonlighting movie stars doesn't mean that downtown theaters don't traffic in celebrity.

The Mandrake, a bawdy farce about a schemer who tricks a buffoon into allowing himself to be cuckolded, was a hit in the early 16th century, but it's fair to say that one of the main reasons it's revived today is that it was written by Machiavelli, the Italian philosopher whose famous name has become a popular insult in contemporary politics. Like recent versions of rarely produced plays by Tolstoy and Pope John Paul II, this broad, straining production, which runs through Feb. 10 at the Pearl Theater Company, holds an undeniable curiosity value but, sadly, doesn't capitalize on it.

Applying some of his ruthlessly pragmatic ideas about gaining and keeping power to the high-stakes arena of romance, Machiavelli, who wrote this play as well as his classic treatise The Prince after a forced retirement when the Medicis regained power, laced his frothy plot with satirical pokes at religious hypocrisy and conventional morality. But these elements take a back seat in the director Jim Calder's knockabout staging, which gets laughs the old-fashioned way: by hamming it up.

Among the old chestnuts on display here are clownish costumes and a candy-colored set that looks like a life-size dollhouse.

As for the collection of jokes, they are told with so much gesticulation that the actors -- especially Erik Steele, who plays Callimaco, the Casanova type trying to seduce the beautiful Lucrezia (Rachel Botchan) -- seem to be performing in some kind of new sign language. All this arm waving appears in service of recasting centuries-old material for a modern sensibility in the most vulgar way possible. Pointing at one's crotch, to emphasize jokes about impotence or sex, is a favored tactic. It doesn't help that the new colloquial translation by Peter Constantine is a jumble of cliches (that will be the day, test the waters).

In the end it's Machiavelli as sex comedy, which would be fine, I guess, if the actors delivered the belly laughs. The ends may justify the means, but only, of course, if you achieve the ends.

The Mandrake runs through Feb. 10 at the Pearl Theater Company, 80 St. Marks Place, East Village; (212) 598-9802, pearltheatre.org.

[Illustration]PHOTO: Erik Steele, Dominic Cuskern and Rachel Botchan in the play. (PHOTOGRAPH BY ERIN BETH DONNELLY)