Vice Versa
Playwright: Phil Porter Director: Janice Honeyman Swan Theatre, Waterside, Stratford-upon-avon, Warwickshire (01789-403493) Until 9 September Running time: 2hrs 25mins (including interval)
All roads lead to Rome at the RSC this season, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. Julius Caesar and Antony and Cleopatra have
already opened; Titus Andronicus and Coriolanus are to come. So now, as if “bulking out a teacher’s pack”, they’ve “thrown in a pastiche Plautus comedy to thicken the thematic mix and lighten the mood”. Phil Porter’s “larky homage” to the third century BC Roman playwright is billed as “lovingly ripped off” from its source material. I myself would have preferred the RSC to have staged a proper Plautus, but if you’re “prepared to indulge” a twohour gag-fest of “full-on zaniness” and Carry On- style innuendo, then “titter ye may at Porter’s dogged pursuit of puerility maximus” in a “zippy” production by Janice Honeyman.
The play’s subtitle offers a decent synopsis of its plot, said Ian Shuttleworth in the FT: the Decline and Fall of General Braggadocio at the Hands of His Canny Servant Dexter and Terence the Monkey. The general in question, played by Felix Hayes, resplendent in sandals and Superman socks, is (of course) a vainly bombastic numpty with a weakness for women. And his downfall comes courtesy of a pretendidentical-twins farce plot in which he is tricked into freeing his concubine, Voluptua. It is, in short, a genuine crowd-pleasing romp, said Michael Billington in The Guardian. And even if it sometimes “strives a bit too hard – do the band really need to wear monkey costumes? – it scoops up the laughs”.
Honeyman pitches the comic register “just the right side of overripeness”, said Ben Kulvichit in The Stage. And there are terrific performances from Hayes, who plays Braggadocio with “virtuosic pomp”, and from Sophia Nomvete, who knows how to get the audience onside as the cunning slave Dexter. In fact, the entire highenergy cast get into the spirit of the show, said Michael Davies on Whatsonstage.com, and succeed in delivering a “rollicking night of freewheeling fun”.