Mr Callow, you’re needed onstage!
The Philanthropist (Trafalgar Studios) Verdict: Enjoyable, but underpowered ★★★✩✩
TRENDY casting and weak direction are the undoing of a revival of Christopher Hampton’s 1971 comedy The Philanthropist.
Few of the cast have much stage experience and you only wish director Simon Callow had given himself a part. It needs an actor of his booming presence to make the thing motor.
The play was and remains a clever idea. Hampton mirrored Moliere’s The Misanthrope. In the Moliere story, the main character is an impossible crosspatch. In The Philanthropist, the central figure is a pernickety philologist who drives everyone mad by being a doormat.
University don Philip (played by Simon Bird) is the most tolerant and, in a nerdy way, genial of academics. He hates to make a fuss. He barely protests when his fiancee leaves him.
This production begins well. It is staged on a striking, white-floored, white-walled set — Philip’s living room, in which the story unfolds. The opening scene concludes with a celebrated bang and by that point we have already seen Philip’s easy-going reluctance to criticise his fellow beings.
Mr Bird, short, dark and bespectacled, plays him almost as a wonkish version of Ronnie Corbett. It is hard to convey mild-mannered hesitation at length. There are only so many times you can clap your hands, sigh and sit down in an equable manner.
Philip throws a supper party at which the guests include an obnoxious celebrity author, Braham, ‘one of those writers who’s been forced to abandon the Left for tax reasons’.
Chauvinist Braham is played by Matt Berry and he enters in a purple, three-piece, velvet suit. With his long hair and beard, he could almost be one of the blokes from Abba. HERE, surely, is a figure who needs to be loud, over- thetop, magnetic in an appalling way. Mr Berry, best known for film and TV work, proves unequal to the task. His first word at Tuesday’s preview was inaudible and he continued to be hard to hear.
Was that the fault of the Trafalgar’s life - sapping auditorium, Mr Berry’s short- comings or overly benevolent direction from Mr Callow?
There are three female parts, one with no lines (well done Lowenna Melrose!). Charlotte Ritchie does fine as Philip’s girlfriend. That leaves Lily Cole as seductress Araminta.
Miss Cole delivers a peculiar performance, employing an accent that sounds more Rhodesian than Sloane Rangerish. She may look ravishing but the characterisation is dreadfully stilted.
The one good thing to be said is she managed to continue through a minor disaster when she knocked a box of cornflakes all over the floor. Crunch crunch underfoot as the other actors tried to ignore them.
Despite that unintended farce, there are sustained moments of gentle comedy.
I quite enjoyed it. Mr Hampton’s script has some subtle gems (savour the line ‘I just came back to tell you why I wasn’t coming back’) but it is so sparing in its comical crests that even experienced actors might struggle.
No doubt this cast will improve as the three-month run unfolds.