“sparkles with fun and mischief from start to finish”
What a lovely romp! This contemporary take on Restoration comedy sparkles with fun and mischief from start to finish. Hannah Boland Moore’s direction is spot on, weaving a world for the characters to inhabit with minimal set and props, and creating moments of true comic genius.
The play is perfectly cast, and there is not a weak link in the talented and energetic company, who are clearly having a lot of fun with this story of love, betrayal and scandal. They are so at home with the seventeenth century language that it is as natural as our everyday speech and doesn’t jar at all with the contemporary setting.
The play opens at a music festival, setting the scene for revelry and seduction. Will Kelly’s Sir John Brute has already had enough of marriage after only two years and he lets his poor wife know all about it. Kelly’s performance is assured and convincing, we wonder from very early in the play how his poor wife can bear him. Meg Coombs brings a mix of vulnerability and determination to her Lady Brute, her marriage is a mess and she is tempted by the attentions of Constant, a sweet young man who is in love with her.
Will she or won’t she? Will Hearle’s Constant is adorably tongue-tied when he sees the object of his affections, torn between honorable behaviour and the desire for his love. Into this mix enters Lady Fanciful, played with a wonderful vivacity and plentiful hair flicking by Jessie Lilly. She loves to stir up trouble and thinks herself the most beautiful woman in town. She is supported in this fancy by her french maid, Mademoiselle, Sophie Alexander, who fizzes with catty sycophancy. Constant’s friend, Heartfree, tries to school Lady Fanciful and swears he will never fall in love, but will he? It is Tim Gibson’s Heartfree who most embodies the glorious sense of mischief at the heart of the play. His eyes sparkle as he plots, and his energy and joie-de-vivre are infectious.
Conor Cook has the tricky task of being largely in the background for most of the action. When his character Lovewell steps out of the shadows he does a great job of unleashing chaos and trying to sort out the tangled web he has helped to weave. Lady Brute’s niece Belinda is a forthright young woman, played with cheeky effervescence by Claudia Campbell, and in her we, perhaps, see a critique of the way in which women were supposed to behave in late seventeenth century England, and sometimes still are, even today. She speaks her mind and is never punished for it. Quite the opposite in fact.
When Vanbrugh was writing this play women were still a novelty on stage and his female characters in this play show a desire to escape from the strictures of their proscribed roles. Lady Brute and Belinda are a delightful pair, and were first played by two of the first, highly celebrated actresses, Elizabeth Barry and Anne Bracegirdle.
I like to think that that indomitable pair would approve of this version of The Provoked Wife, with it’s faithfulness to the text and spirit of the original and it’s glorious contemporary relevance and fun.
Odd Man Out, showing at The Hope Theatre, is a two tale offering of very different men inviting us to bear witness to the stories and confessions of pivotal moments in their lives.
The first, Rabbitskin, written by Dominic Grace and affectionately performed by Luke Adamson is the story of Joe, a young man working out his place in his family and the world, following his mother’s death.
After a slightly clunky start, Adamson finds fluidity to the jumps of Joe’s erratic and gently charming story telling. Adamson is evidently a capable performer, comfortably engaging in multiple roles with ease. Physically Joe’s awkwardness is consistently delivered but I was left wondering if certain, heavily repeated traits were the actor’s choice or director’s request.
The biggest downfall was a tendency to play larger than the space required. At times this lead to a somewhat animated performance and a loss of the much needed intimacy between audience and performer, which is vital for a piece of this nature to fully hit all its emotional marks. With this in mind, I would be interested to see a stripped back, starker portrayal to allow us to engage more with the raw and deeply personal memories.
The writing is well paced with beautiful visual detail, an ideal piece for a one-man performance. The time jump after the penultimate scene could have been utilised to fully cement the emotional journeys of the other characters and allow the final reveal the truly harrowing response it deserves.
In Diary of a Welshcake by Lesley Ross, we quickly warm to the bubbling Ralph (Gregory Ashton) as he offers us Welshcake and asks us to stand for the National Anthem. His early acclamation that this is not theatre, nor stand-up, but a deeply personal story is a useful insight, however not really followed through.
Ralph is Welsh, but doesn’t carry the accent. He is patriotic but spent much of his time in the Midlands before returning to Wales following a painful break-up with his Comic-Con wife. On his best friend’s advice he journeys to Hong Kong to teach English where he starts a bizarre relationship with one of his students which predicable ends in disaster.
The final message of the piece is along the lines of finding oneself on a belated gap year. Unfortunately the performance, thoughts and storyline dart off in tangents that benefit neither the character nor the story. The emotions the audience should experience are utterly prescribed; a tragedy occurs, you should feel devastated or upset. You don’t.
That said, Ralph is harmless and likeable, though it is in the embodiment of Ralph’s new flatmate Matthew (pronounced M-ugh-chew) that Ashton is at his strongest and most engaging.
Overall these are two well contrasted pieces offering the audience the opportunity to engage in the full spectrum of human emotion.
