The Mandrake (1971)

La Mandragola by Niccolò Machiavelli (who is perhaps best known for his political commentary The Prince) is regarded as an important play of the Italian Renaissance and the first comedy of character. A satirical play written circa 1520, La Mandragola is set in 1504 Florence and captures the story of a young man who falls for a married woman an ends up in a complicated web of political intrigue. The National Arts Centre produced Eric Bentley's English adaptation, The Mandrake, as part of its first season in 1971-1972. The play ran in the NAC Studio Theatre from November 16-December 4, 1971, and was directed by Marigold Charlesworth.

The set for the show was designed by Mark Negin, a British-Canadian designer, well known for their work in London and Winnipeg. The production took place on the NAC's Studio stage and was designed with the audience integrated into the performance space. The maquette features a central stage that mirrors the hexagonal shape of the larger room (a feature of the NAC's building design), with a fountain in the very centre of the stage. There is a smaller stage platform on three sides at up centre-stage, and stage right and left. Between each of these stages and forming the boundaries of the central hexagonal stage platform, are bleacher like seats for the audience. Each of the three stage platform have tall arch structures built over them and the whole room is surrounded by two balconies.

This was one of the largest maquettes of the collection we worked on this term, at 56.5 cm (height) by 43.5 cm (width) by 28.5 cm (depth), which rendered the physical act of preservation a little more straightfoward to do, but by no means easier! Though nearly entirely intact, The Mandrake's maquette was incredibly dusty. The two students working on this maquette, Alexis Castrogiovanni and Margaret Mathieu, began the cleaning process with cheesecloth on all large flat surfaces, including the main or centre stage part of the maquette and the gradual stairs on the stage. They then continued with brushes to clean the corners of the stairs, then moved onto the upper balconies. There was some difficultly accessing the many corners and upper balconies in order to dust thoroughly due to the walled-in, hexagonal construction of the maquette.

After this first session of cleaning (which removed a significant amount of dust), they agreed that working from the top down was the best way to proceed because we would move dust from upper balconies onto the lower parts of the maquette. They worked methodically in this top-down approach for two class visits, working primarily with brushes and a small air pump to blow dust gently out of corners.

Unlike other maquettes, the cotton swabs were not as helpful for The Mandrake due in large part to the texture of the finishes, which made cotton swabs catch. This team compelted their work with one final sweep of the main stage with cheesecloth.

Preservation team: Alexis Castrogiovanni and Margaret Mathieu