Drama is more chaos than farce
This stylish new production packs a bit too much punch
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In a programme note, director Colm Summers asks: ‘What can eighteenth century drama offer theatre in the twenty-first century’? Much the same as drama today suppose: reflections on things that remain universal and persistent – nationalism, prejudice, love, greed and the ridiculous side of human nature. But above all it can be funny.
As a general rule, farce is funniest when it’s played straight, without too much emphasis. This production goes overboard in trying to show that Charles Macklin’s 1759 play is a real rib-tickler.
The laughter was sporadic on opening night, mainly, I think because the frantic business onstage too often looked more like chaos than farce.
Some of the dialogue was unintelligible, especially when the lascivious Scotsman Sir Archie McSarcasm, played by Colm Lennon, was making a case for himself as a suitable husband for the beautiful wealthy Charlotte.
Sir Archie is expected to have a broad accent and spews a good deal of Scottish dialect, but it doesn’t help when it’s played at top speed and mixed with distracting hyper-activity. A smidgen of subtlety would have been nice.
Granted, Charles Macklin himself wasn’t too subtle. He once killed another actor in a back-stage row. However, most of the other roles are played with some style, and some of the innovations, such as having the players read stage directions and making improvisations worked quite well.
When the work was first produced in 1759 it was played as an afterpiece to The Merchant Of Venice, and the simple plot has an element of Shakespeare’s play — contrasting suitors competing to marry a desirable woman. As well as the uncouth Sir Archie, there’s a foppish Jewish character, the Irishman Sir Callaghan O’Brallaghan and a horsemad squire from the shires who judges everything, including Charlotte, in terms of horseflesh.
Sir Callaghan is the opposite of the stage-Irish buffoon; he’s a soldier, and a gentleman with a poetic soul.
And as played by Stephen O’Leary, (standing in apparently for Charlie McLaughlin) he’s a dignified contrast with the rival money-grabbing suitors.
His argument with Sir Archie about Celtic ancestry is one of the better scenes and O’Leary sings with considerable charm to the self-assured Charlotte of Caitlin Scott. In a neat change in the script he declares her eyes have made him a prisoner of war, not vice versa.
But more restrained direction would get greater comic value from the enthusiastic cast.
‘It doesn’t help that Sir Archie’s broad Scottish accent is delivered at top speed’