AN ELEGANT MADNESS. To 22 September.

London

AN ELEGANT MADNESS
by Ron Hutchinson

Dual Control Theatre Company at The White Bear Theatre To 22 September
(Except 20 September, at the Aster Theatre, Deal).
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Sun 4pm
Runs 2hr One interval

TICKETS 020 7793 9193
Review Timothy Ramsden 8 September

Glamour and splendour reduced to ashes in 1819 Paris, with a play of irreconcilable opposites.Here's another play making its way not from fringe to West End, but in reverse (having toured as Beau Brummell, it played London as The Beau). The White Bear's intimacy suits a two-hander about cramped, pseudo-hellish lives. Especially when one character has moved from centre stage in English society to unacknowledged confinement in France.

Beau Brummell, ancestor of the glitzies who have thrived in the age of glossy magazines and TV, was that most wretchedly remembered type – the personality, famous for being famous ('He's known because he's known because…').

King of Regency society, he was toppled by its blood-royal, the Prince Regent. Poverty-stricken, Brummell awaits a royal recall as the ex-Regent, now George IV, visits Paris. He is, of course, disappointed. Hutchinson hardly keeps it secret that Beau will remain forgotten, though he holds off until the second act making clear where Brummell and his reluctant servant are actually holing-up.

It's a shame no designer's credited, because the tiny, colourless room with its cheerless 2D fire-grate and ex-fashionable clothes wasting on the walls evokes well the shabbiness of Brummell's life.

Yet there's dignity in his straight-backed insistence on his role in revolutionising English society – though he echoed no such social revolution as the fashion-leaders of 1960s England. Not since Marat and De Sade duelled it out in a French asylum (there's some similarity in Hutchinson's setting) has there been a stage debate on the nature of revolution between two so incompatible characters. Though the stage couple they most recall, with Brosnan's self-deluded assurance and Latham's scurrying fury, is Beckett's Hamm and Clove.

And this is the Beau's Endgame: dismissing the servant he can't pay, receiving imaginary noble visitors with smiling condescension right to the final fade-out. It's fascinating to see the play without the strong individual personality performances of Peter Bowles and Richard McCabe. Brosnan appears a deluded figure, though it's hard to imagine he ever carried Brummell's social eclat. Latham's narrow-eyed, vigilant and aggressive servant intensifies the class-hatred. This is someone whose life – and mind – has no room for any indulgence of individual quirks.

Beau Brummell: Sean Brosnan
Austin: Richard Latham

Director: Peter Craze

2002-09-11 07:07:42