For her RSC directorial debut, Selina
Cadell sets out to make her revival of William Congreve’s 1695 comedy
feel at once contemporary and plausibly Restoration. Rosalind Ebbutt’s
costumes retain the period coats and gowns whilst dispensing with the
perukes and knee-breeches. Tom Piper’s set is simple, enabling the
company to be seen rigging the stage while the audience enter. They
also engage in direct banter with us (quite easy on an opening night
with so many friends and colleagues in attendance). Rather than
establishing a Brechtian alienation, however, in which we are distanced
by our awareness that what we are watching is a play, this serves to
merge actors and audience into a single community. The Swan’s deep
thrust stage helps matters by militating against any natural fourth
wall.
Consequently, the dafter aspects of the plot (which is to say most of
it) are neither over-indulged nor mocked, but simply relished as among
friends. It is standard Restoration fare: everybody is deceiving
everybody else whilst amorously pursuing everybody
else. Principally, Valentine Legend
(now there’s a name for a pop idol!) and his beloved Angelica are each
trying to outfox the other into declaring themselves, whilst his
friends Scandal and Tattle learn valuable lessons of their own. Oh, and
there’s a disputed inheritance in there as well, which Valentine’s
selfish father Sir Sampson is trying to revoke..
At the performance I saw, when Ragevan Vasan as a miscellaneous
manservant came on to set the stage after the interval, our teasing
applause prompted him to go into a reprise of the hornpipe in which he
had danced just before the break, then to bust ever more extreme moves
before being bustled off. When Jonathan Broadbent as Tattle gabbled a
line and had to take a second run at it, Justine Mitchell’s Angelica
led the wry looks exchanged with the front rows.
The same playfulness pervades the staging proper: when Michael Thomas
plants his body against a door in a free-standing frame to attempt to
block the entry of Tom Turner’s Valentine, Turner simply walks round
the side of the frame. Turner’s feigned madness at this stage in the
proceedings is of a languid English kind, with a whiff of the late
Vivian Stanshall. His manner in general makes him a plausible son of
Sir Sampson as played by Nicholas Le Prevost with his mastery of
self-puncturing suavity. It all bubbles along enjoyably, although after
three hours it has delighted us enough.
Written for the Financial
Times.