Riverside Shakespeare Company - Tom Hanks and Michael Wolff in Machiavelli's The Mandrake

Tom Hanks and Michael Wolff in Machiavelli's The Mandrake

In 1979 the Riverside Shakespeare Company mounted Niccolo Machiavelli's Renaissance farce, The Mandrake, in the large second floor auditorium of the Casa Italiana of Columbia University located at West 117th and Amsterdam Avenue.

The Casa Italiana, which had recently been designated by the Landmarks Preservation Commission, proved an ideal setting for production: Riverside's Florentine set was surrounded by the Florentine architecture, wrought iron chandeliers, and Italian antiques, some donated by Premier Benito Mussolini when the building was erected in 1926.

Performing in the style of Commedia dell'arte, with masks and fanciful commedia costumes, the cast included Arland Russell, Mark Cavalieri, Jeff Cameron, Tom Hanks, Susan Kay Logan, Perla Armanasco and Michael Goldner. In this production Tom Hanks played the lead role of the scoundrel Callimaco – in his first and only stage production in New York City.

The production of The Mandrake was cast and rehearsed in the company's fourth floor facility of Columbia University's Prentise Hall in southern Harlem, and was directed by company member Dan Southern (then Daniel O. Smith), The production was played with authentic leather masks and fanciful costumes conceived and constructed by Broadway designer Jane Stein, period sets – including a raked checkerboard stage – designed and built by Gerard Bourcier, lighting (which incorporated the wrought iron chandeliers of the Casa Italiana) by John B. Forbes, and produced by Gloria Skurski and W. Stuart McDowell. In the Heights/Inwood Press of North Manhattan review of March 14, 1979, Jan Rucquoi noted that:

A delightfully produced, fast-paced farce happened uptown on Columbia University's Campus, in the Casa Italiana.... In The Mandrake the audience is often brought into the confidence of the actors who unmask themselves to do so.

The leather masks designed by Stein were often used inventively to comic effect, with actors sometimes removing them for an inner monologue, as in Hanks' portrayal of Callimaco, in which he conversed to himself while holding his quarter mask to one side.

The Mandrake was accompanied by an original jazz score played by Steve Elson, Lincoln Goines, Mio Morales, and composed (and with a running improvised narration) by pianist-composer-orchestra leader Michael Wolff. According to the Heights/Inwood Press of North Manhattan:

The music composed for the play had a Brechtian feel to it, enriching the play and setting the mood of high jinks and fun. Also, the fanciful costumes, works of art in themselves, with their overblown appliqued ornamentation, were a delightful asset to the production.

The production of The Mandrake opened on March 2, 1979 at the Casa Italiana, and was stage managed by Nancy Consentino Minckler and produced by W. Stuart McDowell and Gloria Skurski, in association with Columbia University.