Praise the Lord for the St Paul’s martyrs
THERE has long been something of the plump episcopus about Simon Russell Beale and here he is cast perfectly as the Dean of St Paul’s Cathedral during the Occupy protests three years ago. Anti-capitalists, environmentalists and their ilk set up tents at the bottom of the cathedral steps and drew attention to themselves by chanting peace songs and generally creating a to-do.
That long-running demonstration, which saw St Paul’s closed for a fortnight, brought about the departure of both the traditionalist Dean, Graeme Knowles, who criticised the activists, and his Canon Chancellor, Giles Fraser, who had sided with them. Both were good men doing what they thought was their duty.
The St Paul’s sit-in was a nicely flighted dilemma, perfect for topical theatre. Should the Church of England help underdogs, even if those underdogs (the Occupy protesters, with their often empty tents and their questionable hygiene) were possibly fraudulent; or should the established Church uphold the dignity of the State and fall in step with wider secular opinion?
Noisy free speech or high-church dignity? That was the unenviable decision faced by the senior clergy at St Paul’s.
We may all have a view — for what it is worth, I was marginally in the liberal camp — but Steve Waters’s play is fairly balanced, so far as it goes. At just 90 minutes, it gives us only the church debates, mainly between the Dean (Mr Russell Beale) and the Canon Chancellor (Paul Higgins). We see nothing of the Occupy protesters.
The action takes place in the Chapter’s high-ceilinged office, the great dome of Wren’s church visible through its tall windows. The show opens with beautiful choral chanting and the chiming of a church bell. Later, we even have a couple of sweet choristers on stage.
Mr Russell Beale is at or near his very best. This Dean is dryly amusing, fastidious, agonised by the choice he must make. He is aware of his shortcomings, as, eventually, is the impulsive and vain Canon. The play is unexpectedly droll. Playwright Waters has a good ear for Anglican gossip.
Malcolm Sinclair does a gorgeous turn as the Bishop of London, peachily like the real bishop, Richard Chartres.
This gem of a production honours the Church by taking it seriously at the same time as poking light fun. The arguments inside St Paul’s were certainly a lot more elevated than the ranting outside from the Occupy mob.
WE MAy be used to stage idealisations of love, but here is an idealisation of divorce. It is 1707, when the middle-upper classes were only just coming round to thoughts of legally ending marriages.
George Farquhar’s blowy comedy partly satirises the idea of divorce but does so in such a shallow way that it may strike 21stcentury audiences as unsatisfying. And yet it is quite interesting as a social document. The Beaux’ Stratagem is basically a thing of slapstick and gaiety and light rumpy- pumpy. In those respects, Simon Godwin’s production, with its gorgeous costumes and frisky folk music, does well enough. Two impoverished rakes, Aimwell and Archer ( Samuel Barnett and Geoffrey Streatfeild), descend on the town of Lichfield, in Stafford- shire, to try to bag a rich woman. Along the way they encounter an unscrupulous inn-keeper (Lloyd Hutchinson) and his bouncy daughter (Amy Morgan), some highwaymen and a household of women.
Of these, the best known in drama lore is big-hearted Lady Bountiful. Jane Booker makes her a likeable old sausage with a hairdo similar to Nursey from TV’s Blackadder.
Archer pursues an unhappy wife, one Mrs Sullen (Susannah Fielding), while Aimwell goes after Lady Bountiful’s daughter, Dorinda (Pippa Bennett-Warner). Add a dimwit servant and some French prisoners of war, and you have a cast fit for the sort of farce this almost is.
The social comment about divorce — as Mrs Sullen longs to escape her ‘sullen, silent sott’ of a husband — is lowered on top of this insubstantial craft and its springs and axles certainly creak.
We zip from sword-fighting japes and optimistic young love to, in seconds, a divorce squabble. yet the Sullens’ split is a world away from the reality of marital failure. It is a merry enough romp, but woefully inaccurate as a prediction of truths.
VERSIONS of some reviews appeared in earlier editions.