THE MISER by Moliere. Salisbury Playhouse
Salisbury
THE MISER
by Moliere.
Salisbury Playhouse 20 April-5 May 2001.
Runs 2hr 15min One interval
Review Timothy Ramsden 3 May
Genuinely funny, modernised Moliere in the round.
He's a problem, is Moliere, for the British theatre. That middle-class world with servants, parent power ruling adolescents' lives and half-real, half comic stereotype characters. How does it all translate? Stylishly, in Ranjit Bolt's 'newly revised' version.
Like another successful Moliere adaptation, Liz Lochhead's moving of Tartuffe to downmarket 50s Scotland, Bolt has provided the chance for young director Richard Beecham to offer a hurtling comedy in a Salisbury Playhouse reconfigured with all-round audience and actors bursting in from all sides. The whole joyous occasion shows the way to take such a beast is by the horns and swing it round into a world and style with which we can feel at home.
And we are right there, not only in miser Harpagon's (here Mr Harper) home but in his mind as Beecham starts with a nightmare sequence where sinister masked figures emerge from the floor to burgle and kill the old man.The comic action that follows shows how such fears project themselves, making miserable the lives of those around. Harper's secretary Victor (upright Stephen Billington) smarms up to him, while secretly hoping to marry his daughter Eleanor (Fenella Woolgar).
Charlie, Harper junior (Jamie Bradley, a touch too frenetic for his character's good), is worse off - he's in love with pretty Marianne (Lisa Ellis) who's lusted after by the old man himself. There's a peach-supreme performance from Maggis Norris as the chain-smoking Ms Fixit Fay, whose every reaction to the world around is a comic delight. This is just the mix of individual and type that works in Moliere.
The women are especially well acted, while Shaun Prendergast provides energy as the Cook/Chauffeur Jack. Brian Poyser's Harper is a well-judged mix of monster, fool and victim of his own obsession, finally left crawling across the floor to grab his loot as the rest of the world swirls off to get a life
2001-08-16 09:42:35