Lucy Pittman-Wallace’s production of Oliver Goldsmith's She Stoops To Conquer doesn't quite conquer it's audience in the way its protagonist does her man. Whilst it goes through the motions of this Eighteenth Century Comedy of Manners it falls a long way short of actually invigorating both the script and the story to make an interesting, energised performance. The narrative, where a suitor mistakes the manor of his promised betrothed for the local inn, is not complex and the audience are privilege to this information before even the arrival of the young lover. This knowledge however, instead of serving to amplify the foolishness of the characters, merely makes the events less exciting with the privy of later information related in semi-naturalistic scenes rather than in winking asides to a willing and knowing crowd.
The same can be said of the approach to the text, which whilst far from high-brow lacks the joke-per-minute bawdiness of the earlier Restoration Comedies, and with a plot so contrived the audience lacked any conspiratorial involvement to keep their attention. Chris Nayak is likeable as the simplistic Lumpkin, with some great last night ad-libs it must be said, and Ellie Beavan’s Kate at least plays some of the expository asides to an audience keen to be directly involved with her ploy to ‘conquer’ the bumbling Marlow by dressing as humble barmaid.
Yet this style of delivery is lacking elsewhere with most of Mike Burnside’s lines as Hardcastle lost by his flapping wig and profile stance. More pressing is that all the actors become upstaged by the larger-than-life scenery; it certainly larger than the characterisation of most the actors with the indictment being that the biggest laugh of the night was given to the arrival of the two actors on the back of a giant prop dog. This production stooped more to ask politely than conquer with a brash and ribald performance of the mistakes of a night.
She Stoops To Conquer: **
Image courtesy of Robert Day
No comments:
Post a Comment