HAVE YOU ANYTHING TO DECLARE? Hennequin/Veber, Orange Tree till 2 February
HAVE YOU ANYTHING TO DECLARE?: Maurice Hennequin and Pierre Veber, translated by Braham Murray and Robert Cogo-Fawcett
Orange Tree; Tkts 020 8940 3633
Runs: 2h 20m, one interval
Review: Vera Lustig, 14th December 2001
A blast from the past: delectable period piece, as fresh and sexy as when it was written 100 years ago
The devilry is in the detail. Doors are essential to farce; the Orange Tree has none, so the visible Stage Manager provides all the clicks and slams, bang on cue. The convention is established in the opening moments: two maids, glaring at each other, enter the Parisian living-room carrying trays. One kicks the door 'shut' behind her. When she opens the imaginary blinds, the morning light suffuses her face.
Cast:
Ernestine: Anna Hewson
Lise Dupont: Octavia Walters
Gontran des Barbettes: David Antrobus
La Baule: Jason Baughan
Adelaide Dupont: Auriol Smith
Benjamin Dupont: Robert McBain
Philippe Couzan: Frank Moorey
Frontignac: Stuart Fox
Paulette de Trivelin: Cate Debenham-Taylor
Vicomte Robert de Trivelin: Damien Matthews
Zeze: Jane Arden
Mariette: Anna Hewson
Jean: David Antrobus
Stage Manager: Samantha Tagg
Director: Sam Walters
Designer: Tim Meacock
Lighting: Sam Akester
The production breathes gracious living; the actors move as though waltzing. There's a whiff of the exotic: when a camel dealer visits the Dupont household – as they do – he kneels on the floor, as if still in his tent.
This stylishness is sustained throughout the feverish goings-on involving a marriage unconsummated thanks to the untimely intrusion of a customs official calling 'Have you . . . ?'; a prostitute in a bohemian artist's studio (Jane Arden, alluring but shrill); confused men in their long-johns; a distinguished judge, fleeing wrongful imprisonment (sprung by a policeman he had once bribed) and forced to direct the traffic . . .
In addition to all her door-slamming, the tireless Stage Manager moves the hands on a large clock: the race is on between two men for the hand of Paulette Dupont and the chance to sire a (male) dynasty. Who will it be – the incumbent, handsome but temporarily impotent de Trivelin, or jilted la Baule, a chap (gloriously lachrymose Jason Baughan) desperate enough to creep into the house at night disguised as a customs official in preposterous beard and yell outside the conjugal bedroom the question calculated to wilt de Trivelin's celery?
There's no puritanical Anglo-Saxon smuttiness here; the voices have a well-fed, throaty lasciviousness. Everyone either twinklingly remembers sex, anticipates it, or is agog about the great 'mystery', except, predictably, cross Mme Dupont.
It's an imperfect world, recreated to near-perfection.
2001-12-31 15:11:00