Playful study of love and sex within class boundaries
The Lottery of Love
Orange Tree, Richmond ★★★★ ★
There is little doubt that John Fowles is one of the greatest novelists of the late 20th century. But The Lottery of Love, his translation of Marivaux’s sparkling comedy Le Jeu de l’amour et du hasard, suggests he could have pursued a life in the theatre to similar acclaim.
Created in 1983 and performed in a sole rehearsal reading at the National the following year, the piece transposes the play from its 18thcentury Comédie Italienne setting to a Regency drawing room. Parallels with Austen are clear and in Sylvia, the central character, we have a heroine every bit as spirited, and occasionally as foolhardy, as Emma Woodhouse.
In Paul Miller’s splendid, lightfooted production – performed in the round, making it an arena of intense psychological scrutiny – every bit of double-crossing and comic confusion is milked to terrific effect. The convoluted plot sees the wealthy Sylvia engaged to Richard, whom she has never met. In order to unmask his true personality, she decides to swap places with her chambermaid, Louisa. Unknown to both of them, Richard has had the same idea and trades identities with Brass, his servant.
With more than a little predictability, the disguised Sylvia falls in love with the disguised Richard, and Brass – posing none too convincingly as a gentleman – with the gamely duplicitous Louisa. Feelings are duly reciprocated. Of course, modern audiences may find this hard to stomach. Flirting across class barriers (something Fowles explored with sublime results in The French Lieutenant’s Woman) is proved to be not only unwise but also unlikely – the assumption being that breeding will out and you will always be attracted to your social equal. Even if Richard does prove willing to renounce his standing for love, his passion is ultimately fettered to someone of his kind.
Luckily, Fowles nimbly sidestepped this obstacle by giving such a powerful and playful account of sexual desire that it is almost overwhelming. “I’m going to be very frank, Mr Richard,” says Sylvia at one point. “You love me. But it’s not really love, it’s only desire for my body. And once that’s satisfied, think how easy it would be for you to get rid of me.”
The cast grab the psychosexual hijinks with gusto. Keir Charles as the real Brass is a ball of mercurial energy, an haitch-dropping, preening Russell Brand, while Claire Lams is a pert and sparky Louisa. Ashley Zhangazha, by necessity more serious than the others, shows a gift for language as Richard that would suggest a Shakespearean star of the future. But the stand-out performance comes from Dorothea Myer-Bennett as Sylvia, who runs through every possible emotion yet always grounds her feelings with a very believable and witty cynicism. A combination of fine comic timing and gut-wrenching despair is almost impossible to achieve, but Myer-Bennett does so – and it’s spellbinding.
At the end of this production, I was left feeling that Fowles was not the only one in need of repatriation. Marivaux, once revived at regular intervals, has been recently neglected and that’s a shame. His plays have been dismissed as all soufflé and no substance, but in his understanding of the psychology of love, he has few rivals. Until May 13. Tickets: 020 8940 3633; orangetreetheatre.co.uk