The Theater: Delirium Risibilitatis

SLY FOX

by LARRY GELBART

Broadway's cup of holiday cheer brims over with the arrival of Sly Fox. Based on Ben Jonson's Volpone, this wickedly farcical encounter between knaves and fools hides the tongue of moral satire in the cheek of roguery.

Greed is the theme of the play, greed so compelling as to raise it to an obsessive lust for money. In this reincarnation, the setting has become San Francisco in the 1890s. Volpone has become Foxwell J. Sly, played with shark's-tooth gusto by George C. Scott. Rich and childless. Sly feigns grave...

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