A Village Wooing by Shaw and The Proposal by Chekhov, The Tabard, 2 Bath Road, Chiswick, London W4 until 23 August 2025. 4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

Photo Credit: Macky Mann.

A Village Wooing by Shaw and The Proposal by Chekhov, The Tabard, 2 Bath Road, Chiswick, London W4 until 23 August 2025,

4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

“Two sparking comedies well performed.”

Not all that glitters is on stage in the Edinburgh Fringe. This sparkling double bill directed by Jonas Cemm at The Tabard has wit and wisdom in plenty and provide Maryann O'Brien and Joe Sargent with opportunities to display their versatility playing two pairs of combative lovers while remaining looking pretty much the same. It is what one calls acting, and doing it very well indeed. The double bill consists of the 1933  A Village Wooing paired with The Proposal by Chekhov.  In The Proposal a young Russian landlowner turns up to ask for the hand in marriage of his neighbour’s daughter and his diffidence and her terrible temper repeatedly wrecks everything several times until they do get what they deserve – one another. It is fluff and treated as such.

A Village Wooing, however, is a more substantial piece and mines pretty much they same areas of men's relationship with women as Man and Superman. A young woman who works in a village shop and looks after the telephone wins a prize and spends it by going on a cruise where she meets a stuffy widower who is writing a guidebook for the cruise company and finds her exasperating and unbearable. Some  time later he is travelling in the country, visits a local grocer's shop, and is persuaded that this is the perfect life for him but being the sort of man he is, he does not realise that the young woman who more or less runs it is the woman from the cruise ship. It makes for a very funny battle of the sexes as he may be unaware if who she is but she knows who he is and he is the man she has decided is the one she will marry. The same two actors, Maryanne O'Brien and Joe Sargent appear in both plays and impressively manage - without any major change of appearance - to create two very diffierent couples. The plays move briskly,  Anthony Wise has fun a the father desperate to get his termagent daughter wed, and while The Proposal is just a simple joke A Village Wooing has lots to talk about afterwards.

Cast

Maryanne O`Brien – Natalya, Z.

Joe Sargent – Ivan, A.

Creatives

Director – Jonas Cemm.

Design Team – Jonathan Blake, Ruth Hepplethwaite, Maryann O`Brien.