The Libertine
Playwright: Stephen Jeffreys Director: Terry Johnson Theatre Royal Haymarket, 18 Suffolk Street, London SW1 (020-7930 8800) Until 3 December 2016 Running time: 2hrs 45mins (including interval)
It’s often said that a play needs at least some sympathetic characters to emotionally engage its audience. Terry Johnson’s production of Stephen Jeffreys’s The Libertine (1994) gives the lie to that, said Ian Shuttleworth in the FT. In the prologue to this Restoration-era drama, the protagonist – the “notorious rakehell” John Wilmot, the Second Earl of Rochester – announces in as many words, “You will not like me now and you will like me a good deal less as we go on”. And so it proves. The libidinous Wilmot – a “classically influenced but principally obscene poet and playwright” – was repeatedly exiled from the court of Charles II for everything from abducting his future wife to vandalising a £60,000 sundial, and died aged 33 from alcoholism and venereal disease. And it’s hard to find more than fleeting warmth for his unfortunate wife, or his mistress either. Even so, his story makes for a rollicking, bawdy night’s entertainment.
“The gentlemen will be envious and the women will be repelled,” promises Rochester at the start. But “neither of those predictions quite comes true”, said Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail. In the title role, an ill-shaven Dominic Cooper cuts a rather seedy figure, “more likely to provoke scorn and pity”. This Rochester never convinces as an irresistible swell. His descent therefore becomes less of a surprise or tragedy.
Cooper should have been in his “theatrical, testosteronecharged element here”, said Dominic Cavendish in The Daily Telegraph. But he “sucks with too much restraint on this plum role”. Yes, he has a “certain glowering magnificence, a sleepy-eyed air of command, but his delivery inclines to the teetotal, the gravely monotone”. On the contrary, I thought it was a fine performance, said Ann Treneman in The Times: “virile, unpredictable, teetering on the edge of darkness”, and “as sexy as you can be in a lacy collar and cuffs”. He delivers a “totally commanding” performance, said Michael Billington in The Guardian. And there is first-rate support too from Jasper Britton as the “tetchy hedonist” Charles II.
When Barack met Michelle
“Films glorifying sitting leaders” are things one associates with countries like North Korea, said Jordan Hoffman in The Guardian. Which is why Southside With You, a romantic comedy portraying the first date of Barack and Michelle Obama, feels a little too close to hagiography for comfort. It’s 1989: he’s an ambitious intern at a Chicago law firm, she’s his mentor, concerned about what her bosses will think if she falls for “the first cute black man” to come through the door. Yet the two leads, Parker Sawyers and Tika Sumpter, redeem the enterprise, said Robbie Collin in The Daily Telegraph. As they visit an art gallery, attend a political meeting, and eat ice cream, they deliver their lines so naturally you can’t help but be won over. Well, I certainly could, said Edward Porter in The Sunday Times. It’s not just the unsubtle, on-the-nose dialogue that turned me off. It’s the treatment of the president and first lady: the whole thing was so “obsequious” it struck me as “ridiculous”.