SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER. To 16 October.
Pitlochry.
SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER
by Oliver Goldsmith.
Pitlochry Festival Theatre In rep to 16 October 2008.
Mon-Sat 8pm Mat 10, 27 Sept, 16 Oct 2pm.
Runs 2hr 30min One interval.
TICKETS: 01796 484626.
www.pitlochry.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 23 August.
An apt set but too little detail in performances.
This starts impressively, designer Ken Harrison’s set precisely capturing the scene. Which is not 18th-century London society, but the Hardcastles’ remote country home, spacious yet plain. The married pair sit some distance from each other, measuring the gap between his insistence on plain tradition and her wish for up-to-the-minute London fashions. He loves everything old; she repeatedly tries passing herself off younger than her age.
It leads to a dual life for their grown-up daughter Kate, who dresses simply by day, to please her father, and more fashionably in the evenings. This makes her ready for the night when her half-brother Tony, a country oaf whose spiritual home is the pub (yet blessed by Oliver Goldsmith with a benevolence beneath the bad temper his mother’s endearments engender), sends two Londoners to the Hardcastle home with the impression it’s an inn.
One of them, Marlow, arrives as Kate’s reluctant suitor. Nothing personal; he’s simply scared stiff of ladies, and can’t even look her in the face. But not of all women, so when she stoops in her plain day clothes to seem a barmaid, he’s not backward in coming forward. Ironically, this is just what Kate appreciates.
Old and new; shy and brazen; spite and benevolence; contrasts run through this good-natured comedy of mistakes. Harrison’s set converts aptly to pub or garden the few times the action moves from the Hardcastle home. But Richard Baron’s production is too unvarying, though Pitlochry veteran Martyn James creates Hardcastle’s stolidity, Claire Dargo achieves a natural-seeming sense of joy in Kate’s manoeuvres and Joel Same goes some way to match her as young Marlow.
But overall the production strains too hard – and, incidentally, shows that Scottish actors can wreak the kind of generalised havoc on northern English accents that English actors too often have on Scottish. The two best moments come when an actor takes their time, as Karen Davies’ Mrs Hardcastle mouths the written insult about her in a letter, and recalls her duck-pond dunking. For these are moments that seem to arise from the character’s feelings, something all too rare in this revival.
Mrs Hardcastle: Karen Davies.
Squire Hardcastle: Martyn James.
Tony Lumpkin: Christian Edwards.
Kate Hardcastle: Claire Dargo.
Constance Neville: Luisa Prosser.
Young Marlow: Joel Sams.
George Hastings: Greg Powrie.
Stingo/Roger/Sir Charles Marlow: Robin Harvey Edwards.
Diggory/Jeremy: Jonathan Coote.
Pimple: Helen Millar.
Other parts: Jacqueline Dutoit, Helen Millar, Esther McAuley, Sarah Stanley, Jonathan Coote, Martyn James.
Director: Richard Baron.
Designer/Costume: Ken Harrison
Lighting: Ace McCarron.
Sound: Ronnie McConnell.
Music: John Scrimger.
Choreographer: Chris Wilson.
2008-09-03 05:00:59