THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE. To 17 May.
Newbury
THE TRIUMPH OF LOVE
by Marivaux translated by Martin Crimp
Watermill Theatre To 17 May 2003
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Thu & Sat 2.30pm except 17 May 1.30pm & 6.30pm
Runs 2hr 20min One interval
TICKETS: 01635 46044
www.watermill.org.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 25 April
Marivaux’s love comedies from 18th century France have made slow progress on the modern British stage; Martin Crimp’s crisp, characterful translation and Jonathan Munby’s swift production can only help their progress.Every year the Watermill exploits its idyllic garden setting with a classical comedy involving some outdoors playing. With equal inevitability the English climate provides a random selection of downpours during the run to foil the idea on certain days. Like 25 April.
There seemed little (if any) damage. Designer Mike Britton has edged the compact auditorium with a painted luxuriance of foliage. As characters hurtle up and down the side aisles on to the tiny stage, surrounded by audience members, there’s the feel of a maze. It reflects the deluding mirror-images love brings to these characters – supposedly in ancient Sparta, but quite clearly in manner and costume breathing the air of ancien regime France.
Love’s all-conquering, leading Princess Leonide – Anna Hewson a to-die-for mix of cool elegance, quick-witted resource and manipulative skill – into male disguise to woo the son of her parents’ defeated opponents. He, Agis, has retreated to a philosopher’s garden, involving Leonide to reveal her true sex to the philosopher – Paul Webster’s initial ordered severity of manner soon whirled into wild, whispy-haired frenzy. Meanwhile, the philosopher’s stony-faced sister believing Leonide a man, is reduced to the absurdity of middle-aged girlishness in Dinah Stabb’s unselfish performance.
Strangely – or, rather, thanks to the integrity and skill in Webster and Stabb’s performances – these two are both preening figures of fun and people with whose hopeless hopes in love, led on by Leonide, we can feel sympathy.
Munby’s class act production covers the social spectrum, including the comic restraint of Alan McMahon’s self-defined as refined Arlequin and Clive Kneller’s linguistically muddled gardener.
Music, pre-recorded and live contrasts contemplation and action. The final dance is a theatrical flourish: the post-interval dance neatly shows Leonide being all-things to other men and women as they dance round her. It gives a sense of her enjoying the manipulations which is out-of-sync with the message elsewhere that they are necessities of the compulsions love brings.
Leonide: Anna Hewson
Corine: Megan Whelan
Dimas: Clive Kneller
Arlequin: Alan McMahon
Agis: Gary Shelford
Leontine: Dinah Stabb
Hermocrate: Paul Webster
Violinist: Alice Barclay
Director: Jonathan Munby
Designer: Mike Britton
Lighting: Oliver Fenwick
Music: Dominic Haslam
Choreographer: Katherine Taylor
2003-04-29 00:52:46