Don Juan? Tennant is much more like Robert Peston on a big news day
DAVID Tennant as a sex maniac, cavorting at an orgy in nothing but dressing gown and scarlet codpiece?
That is the leap of belief you’ll need to make if you pay the steep ticket prices (commonly £150), to see Mr Tennant as bonking libertine Don Juan.
The idea is to present him as some sort of Russell Brand figure, seedily irresistible to slinky sirens. But Mr Tennant is not quite feral enough a figure to pull off that transformation. He is too quizzical, possibly too keen to be popular. He looks more like ITV political editor Robert Peston on a busy news day.
Patrick Marber’s version of this old story (Don Juan can be dated back to 16th century Spain) was first seen a decade ago.
It places playboy Don Juan in 21st century central London, among the strip clubs of Soho. His servant Stan (Adrian Scarborough on good form) is his chauffeur, keeping record of master’s mistresses on his Blackberry telephone.
The point of the Don Juan tale, normally, is to portray excess which finally receives its dues. This Don Juan certainly lives a decadent life. He is nonchalant about being unfaithful to his wife Elvira (an underpowered Danielle Vitalis) even though they returned from their honeymoon just two weeks earlier. Don Juan chats up another bride while, under a blanket, a third woman pleasures him. This is X-rated stuff, unsuitable for younger Dr Who fans.
Gawn Grainger totters on as Don Juan’s aristocratic father. As happens with Mr Grainger, lines go missing.
The show is strikingly staged, a boxy set with a back wall used for moving photographs at one point. Don Juan enters in a dandyish checked suit. Tapping his chest, he refuses to repent of his sins because ‘God is not known at this address’. Flesh and fellatio are flashed with merry abandon, ho ho. Drugs are offered around like fruit pastilles.
Monday night’s audience tittered and worshipped the famous Tennant. They went quieter during a passage which teeters dangerously close to Islamic blasphemy. Don Juan taunts a Muslim beggar, offering to give him a valuable wristwatch if he will only say various foul sentences about Allah (‘call him a **** ’).
Such is Don Juan’s disregard for eternal damnation, even after he is shown that higher forces exist.
There are only so many times you want to watch this playboy writhe with lasses in their smalls. Mr Marber’s writing is full of verve and has been updated to include topical swipes at everyone from Donald Trump to little Prince George. After last week’s events at Westminster, I found a knifing scene hard to watch.
After two hours of this raunchy braggart satisfying his lusts, the play comes to no powerful conclusion. Don Juan makes a trenchant speech attacking celebritydom – particularly celebrities who blow off about politics, just as Mr Tennant often does.
Yet is the whole spectacle here not built on just that sort of behaviour?
This is a play trying to have it both ways, exposing decadence while simultaneously charging big money for that very sort of titillation. It may be exotic and handsome but ultimately it is as hooked on shallowness as Don Juan.