Not In My Name!

Of all the names which modern culture takes in vain, Niccolò Machiavelli is perhaps not the most obvious. But, as part of series  which reconsiders historical figures, playwright Michael McEvoy turns his attention to the man whose name now casually denotes evil.

McEvoy has a valid point: Machiavelli was a progressive, rational statesman whose treatise The Prince, on which contemporary notions of the ‘machiavellian’ are based, actually cited unethical conduct as an unwelcome side effect of otherwise good government. Whether this point should have been expanded into an hour-long monologue, on the other hand, is questionable.

In an initially disorientating move, Machiavelli bursts onstage, demanding to know why the audience summoned him. After idiot-proof repetition of the fact that his sense of future and past is blurred, it becomes obvious that Machiavelli has travelled into the future in order to be judged in context. From hereon in, the play is roughly divisible into two sections. The first, and by far the most substantial, sees Machiavelli chart his entire life, in an attempt to prove that The Prince does not typify his personal attitudes.

It is barely more entertaining than a history lesson, and anyone with a knowledge of the events in question is likely to be frustrated. The play’s final few minutes, meanwhile, see a total change of tack, with judgement turned on the audience as representatives of Western complicity with ‘machiavellian’ US foreign policy. The preachy nature of this section, which culminates in the titular exclamation, ‘not in my name!’, is difficult to stomach, and the conclusion – that we’ve passed sentence on ourselves, so Machiavelli has no need to – feels falsely climactic. Still, it’ll probably be a while before anyone here refers to George W. Bush as ‘machiavellian’ again, so job done.