The Decameron is one of my favourite pieces of literature.  Written by Giovanni Bocaccio in the fourteenth century, it arguably helped innovate soft core pornography as we know it, though in Bocaccio’s case, sexuality is no excuse for an inferior narrative.  (Which isn’t, so I’m told, the case with your average soft core pornography- SO I’M TOLD.)  The Decameron is set during the plague in Florence, and tells the story of five women and five men who leave the city in the name of fellowship to stay at their country homes together and tell one tale each for ten days to distract themselves from the horrors of the illness that engulfs their lives.  Though there is never any impropriety between the ten men and women, they live vicariously through their tales, and, as the days go on and sexual tension between them builds, the stories they tell manage to get bawdier and bawdier until some surely serve as inspiration for letters written six centuries later to Playboy Magazine.

Clemson University devoted four years to an intensive study of The Decameron that resulted in the production now playing at C Venue 34- aptly named The Decameron Project instead of The Decameron.  The play deals with the central issues of Bocaccio’s work without pretending to stay entirely faithful to the original collection.  Although the tales told remain unchanged, there are great liberties taken with the frame narrative- in fact, Clemson scrapped Bocaccio’s frame narrative nearly entirely, using his ten men and women merely as inspiration for the ten invented characters who leave Florence, and introducing a more dramatically interesting story to surround the tale telling, that aptly adapts and modernizes the collection.

Clemson manages to tell Bocaccio’s tales brilliantly by having the men and women who have left Florence act out the tales for each other in character, adding depth both to the invented travellers and action to the tales themselves.  The sets and costumes are simple and believable, and the music (which was deliberately taken from the period in which the piece is set), played by members of the cast serves as smooth scene transitions.  The cast is made up of students, and not professional actors, but their performances show a great deal of promise and a marvelous understanding of the time period and the rules of courtship.  A child actor in the show, Jeff McLaren, plays a young boy in charge of his manner.  His scene opens with him telling a tale alone through the use of dolls.  His command of the stage on his own is extremely impressive.  He may have a very bright future in theatre.
It is no surprise that the company devoted four years of work and research to Decameron Project.  Although the production lacks inventiveness, relying on well tested dramatic conventions instead of innovations, Clemson University should be commended on a polished translation of “The Decameron” for the stage.   Bawdy yet narratively interesting and even poignant- I think Bocaccio would have approved.  Keep in mind “The Decameron Project” is a student acted show- and though it won’t change your life, it is (unlike so many student shows) worth watching.

C. Venue 34 (on Chambers Street)
August 7th- 12:30, August 8th- 12:30, August 9th- 12:30, August 10th- 12:30, August 11th- 12:30, August 12th- 12:30 £7.50 (£6.50 concession)