The National Theatre’s Christmas
production was to have been
The
Count Of Monte Cristo, but this was postponed for further
development. If its replacement is less than a sheer delight, it is not
for lack of preparation time (the postponement was announced back in
June); rather, I suspect, the reverse. Director Timothy Sheader has had
ample opportunity to exaggerate the supposedly “fun” aspects of Arthur
Wing Pinero’s 1885 proto-farce, to invent new ones and, all in all, to
create a caricature of pleasure rather than the thing itself.
Sheader excels as a director of musicals, and has inserted a clutch of
numbers written by Richard “the Widow” Sisson and Richard Stilgoe and
sung by a chorus of clones of the Go Compare tenor. Earlier this year
another director of musicals, Jamie Lloyd, used a similar tactic in his
revival of
She Stoops To Conquer
on this same stage; could we perhaps declare a moratorium on it now,
and ask directors to trust the plays themselves to do the rollicking?
Katrina Lindsay’s set is inventive but again overdoes matters, with its
crazy cartoon angles, fold-out locations and scene captions.
Principally, Sheader simply sets the acting in too high a gear during
the second act which is the zenith of the farcical business. When three
parties – magistrate Aeneas Posket and his implausibly manly
14-year-old stepson Cis, Cis’s mother and aunt Charlotte, and his
retired-colonel godfather and a military colleague who is also the
estranged fiancé of Charlotte – all coincide in the same room of a
slightly risqué hotel during a police raid there is hiding and dodging
business aplenty, but matters have already been directorially driven
beyond the point of near-frenzy. Mrs Posket and Colonel Lukyn, for
instance, have engaged in several contests more of barking than of
shouting, which is a waste of the talents of actors such as Nancy
Carroll and Jonathan Coy. Even the undoubted star, John Lithgow, only
comes into his own in Act Three with a selection of fine embarrassed
morning-after acting.
Sharper performances, with speed instead of exaggeration, would shave
off a quarter-hour; cutting the songs would save as much again; this
would then be a nippy, hour-each-way production, instead of one which
takes too much time and effort only to mimic enjoyment.
Written for the Financial
Times.