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The Game of Love and Chance

The Game of Love and Chance

★★★★

Arcola Theatre

The Game of Love and Chance

The Game of Love and Chance

Arcola Theatre

Reviewed – 19th July 2021

★★★★

 

“The Arcola Theatre continues its well deserved reputation for offering quality theatre with this show”

 

Pierre de Marivaux’s classic comedy The Game of Love and Chance has just opened in a sparkling revival at the Arcola Theatre in Hackney. The eighteenth century script is newly adapted by Quentin Beroud and Jack Gamble (who also directed) and brought up to date in a modern dress production. Staged outdoors (a blessing on a hot and sticky July night) there is a lot to enjoy in this show, and the energetic performances of the cast of six.

The plot of The Game of Love and Chance is simple enough. It’s a classic because of the way in which Marivaux sets it up, and then turns the screws by introducing complication after complication. Sylvia, a wealthy and aristocratic young woman, is expecting a visit from her betrothed, Dorante, whom she has never met. Sylvia begs her father for an opportunity to get to know him without his knowledge of who she really is. She wants to change places with her maid Lisette. She is a typical Enlightenment woman, more afraid of a man’s mind (or lack of it) than his heart. Her father Orgon readily agrees, having just received a letter from Dorante’s father proposing that Dorante woo Sylvia, also dressed in a servant’s disguise. Both fathers want to give their children the chance to fall in love without the distraction of wealth or family position. Of course it all gets hilariously convoluted before Dorante and Sylvia (and their servants Lisette and Harlequin) are happily, and appropriately, mated in their “game of love and chance.”

The Game of Love and Chance owes a lot to the Italian tradition of commedia dell’arte, and despite the modernized setting, adaptors Beroud and Gamble have remained true to that. There are multiple opportunities for lazzi, or comic routines, both on and off stage. The set, designed by Louie Whitemore, and tucked into a corner of the Arcola Outside, is the perfect space for all the comic business that must enacted before the lovers are finally united. “Marivaudage “ or the banter that Marivaux’s dramas are famous for, is also present, not only on stage, but also in the delicious back and forth that Lisette (played by Beth Lilly) engages in with the audience. The script keeps the audience laughing with a lively mix of rhymes (“humble crumble”), seemingly on the spot improvisation, and opportunities for sight gags. The actors are clearly enjoying themselves performing it, and spread that joy around the auditorium.

And it is the performances that really make this revival shine. Updating dramas from the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries can always be problematic in that they seem just modern enough for us to understand intuitively, but then there is all that class warfare business and discomfort with the idea of arranged marriages to overcome, before we can truly relax and enjoy the situation. Beroud and Gamble’s modernization of The Game of Love and Chance is not immune from the dilemmas of translating the eighteenth century to the twenty-first. Some of the solutions do seem a bit trite. Fortunately for us, however, the cast of this adaptation of The Game of Love and Chance know just how to settle us down. The whole cast works well as an ensemble, but the couple who really hold the whole thing together are the boisterously funny Ellie Nunn as Sylvia and Ammar Duffus as her lover Dorante, or, as the hilariously and spontaneously named Catflap, in his servant disguise. (You have to be paying attention to the set to see how this comes about.) Nunn and Duffus play effortlessly off one another, but it’s Duffus’ intense sincerity that keeps the whole situation grounded when the comic complications threaten to get out of hand. Beth Lilly and Michael Lyle (as Harlequin) are the other pair of seemingly mismatched lovers, and manage their lazzi (and Marivaudage) with confidence and flair. David Acton, as Sylvia’s genial father Orgon, and George Kemp as her annoying brother Marius, complete the energetic team.

The Arcola Theatre continues its well deserved reputation for offering quality theatre with this show, and it’s always worth the journey to see what they are producing. The Game of Love and Chance could be seen as a bit of an outlier in their repertoire, but if you’ve never seen Marivaux’s work, and are curious, this is a decent introduction. Just remember to take cold water with you if it’s a hot night. Laughter is thirsty work.

 

 

Reviewed by Dominica Plummer

Photography by Alex Brenner

 

The Game of Love and Chance

Arcola Theatre until 7th August

 

Previously reviewed at this venue:
The Narcissist | ★★★ | Arcola Theatre | July 2021

 

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Kill Climate Deniers
★★★★

Pleasance Theatre

Kill Climate Deniers

Kill Climate Deniers

Pleasance Theatre

Reviewed – 7th June 2019

★★★★

 

“by thirty minutes in the audience mood has swelled into bonhomie”

 

‘You want to call your play something fun, something playful, something catchy’. So opens this exploration of the overlapping worlds of climate science, denial and activism. The questionable ‘fun’ of the title sums up the tensions that David Finnigan’s writing and Nic Connaughton’s direction unpack; tensions between laugh-out-loud comedy and the very real tragedy of our warming planet.

The ninety minute production in the downstairs Pleasance Space starts a little slowly, understandably. Some narrative explication is needed; this play is meta to the max, and even more so on press night when playwright David Finnigan was both represented on stage, by Nathan Coenen, and sitting within the audience. Coenen, as ‘Finig’, addresses us throughout the play, inserting wry asides and giving context to the ideas that led to his writing a play with quite such an inflammatory title (of which more later).

The otherwise all-female cast is uniformly strong, variously turning their hands to physicality, comedy and pathos, but it’s no surprise that the star of the show is highly-regarded comedian Felicity Ward as earnest but chaotic Environment Minister Gwen Malkin. We watch as Finig’s flippant (or was it?) play title starts to convert into a call to action, and the second phase of the play sees a switch into action with Malkin eventually taking down climate terrorists to an absolutely banging soundtrack of nineties dance classics.

The choreography, by movement director Rubyyy Jones, is exceptional; they deserve note for further enhancing and celebrating the energy of this litany of amazing tracks. Jones’ work and great lighting design from Geoff Hense help the play into gear and by thirty minutes in the audience mood has swelled into bonhomie – aided in no small part by a lively shared rendition of Fleetwood Mac’s ‘You Can Go Your Own Way’. On that note, fans of The Mac be warned; there is plenty of fun gently poked at the rockers, who play an unexpectedly central role. It’s not personal, though; few institutions go un-poked, and there are some especially ripe representations of Australian right-wing commentators and their slippery uses of language.

Uses and abuses of language are a recurring theme. Finig questions whether it was right to use the menacing imperative of the title and opens the night by repeating, mantra-like, ‘sometimes you get it wrong, you get it wrong, you get it wrong…’. By the close of the play, the audience are similarly turned around. Is it right or helpful to remain in ardent opposition to people with whom we may, in fact, have more in common than we realise? And can we ever effect change that will halt our not-so-slow march towards extinction, or would the change itself be harder than we can bear? Sometimes we do all, indeed, get it wrong, and we all are where climate change is concerned. But Finnigan certainly got this one right.

 

Reviewed by Abi Davies

Photography by Ali Wright

 


Kill Climate Deniers

Pleasance Theatre until 28th June

 

Last ten shows reviewed at this venue:
Bingo | ★★★ | June 2018
Aid Memoir | ★★★ | October 2018
One Duck Down | ★★★★★ | October 2018
The Archive of Educated Hearts | ★★★★ | October 2018
Call Me Vicky | ★★★ | February 2019
Neck Or Nothing | ★★★★ | April 2019
Night Of The Living Dead Live | ★★★ | April 2019
Don’t Look Away | ★★★½ | May 2019
Regen | ★★★ | May 2019
The Millennials | ★★½ | May 2019

 

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