In an RSC summer season that's focusing on often dark issues of prejudice and outcasts, it falls to Ben Jonson to provide the madcap comic relief, as Trevor Nunn returns to Stratford-upon-Avon to revive one of Jonson's classic con-men in
Volpone. Henry Goodman plays the immensely rich Volpone who - as the stock tickers dominating Stephen Brimson Lewis' design suggest - made his fortune on the markets. But he's hungry for more riches and wants to have some fun acquiring them, so he turns other people's greed against them: Pretending to be on his death bed, he lets it be known that he has no heir, and soon there's a queue of people at his door bearing gifts, all in the hope of being named in his will. As his pile of gold gets ever-bigger, he also sets his eye on Celia (Rhiannon Handy,) wife of one of his victims, Corvino (Matthew Kelly.)
