As an artist, inventor and a seeker of knowledge, Leonardo da Vinci was a giant among giants. His curiosity drove him to heights of discovery and creation undreamed of by most and reached by a rare few.
Daedalus, David Davalos’ world-premiere play at the Arden Theatre Company, is a fantasia inspired by a brief period in da Vinci’s life, during which he renounced his identity as an artist to assume one of a military engineer.
During this episode, he encountered both Niccolo Machiavelli, at the time employed as a Florentine diplomat, and Duke Cesare Borgia, who later served as one of Machiavelli’s exemplars in his book The Prince.
This chance meeting of some of the Renaissance’s greatest figures and their likely effects on each other presents a situation of uncanny dramatic potential, a good untold story worth telling.
Daedalus is a play that mixes several engaging concepts in balance or opposition: warrior/peacemaker, artist/scientist, creator/destroyer, masculine/feminine.
The playwright’s viewpoint is both period and contemporary, as Davalos utilizes elements of fact and myth, and blends aspects of both comedy and tragedy.
The collision of genius with the trials and passions of ordinary life is an intriguing thought previously explored in Peter Shaffer’s controversial portrait of Mozart in Amadeus and Tom Stoppard’s screenplay Shakespeare in Love.
Like those before him, Davalos takes artistic license when imagining the artist whose life and work personified the new humanism of the Renaissance.
There are numerous possibilities for the interplay of ideas here, and that opportunity is the biggest problem — too many themes going off in too many directions.
No doubt, Davalos has a flair for imaginative punch lines and a good eye for the bold theatrical surprise, but the grand ideas that he touches upon deserve more depth than the superficial comic banter that is granted here.
Davalos employs an intriguing Jekyll-and-Hyde twist at the center of the play, which is really the crux of the problem — is this going to be a slick comedy or a dramatic exploration? Ungainly, it waffles back and forth between these two approaches.
The dialogue is a curious blend of a formal prose and colloquial modern slang. It readily suggests that Borgia and Machiavelli would have felt perfectly at home in today’s corporate corruption.
The Arden has assembled an impressive cast, expertly tuned toward the shifts in the play’s content and mood. Greg Wood provides a solid portrait of the artist, whose greatness is smothered by venality and corruption.
Peter Pryor exuberantly represents Borgia, the illegitimate son of Pope Alexander VI, and Scott Greer does tantalizingly good work as Machiavelli. The female roles, however underwritten and frivolous, get the best possible turn by Julie Czarnecki, Monica Koskey and Grace Gonglewski.
The play is skillfully directed by Aaron Posner and features Tony Cisek’s circular set decorated with large renditions of Leonardo’s drawings from his notebook. James Leitner’s lighting design is effective and James Sugg’s sound design perfectly blends action with music.
Daedalus may be more comedy than substance, but it does succeed in reminding us how little has changed in the past 500 years, and that was good enough for me.
Daedalus
Arden Theater Company
40 N. Second Street
Through Nov. 3
Tickets: $22-$36
215-922-1122
