Catherine Bennett resumes the weekly look at the performing arts world, with the sad end of Jerusalem, the luck of a cabbie, and French revolt. Do you hear the people sing?
Adam Alcock reviews Nigel Kennedy playing Vivaldi's Four Seasons and his own Four Elements at York Opera House.
Catherine Bennett highlights the trends in the performing arts world today.
Jonathan Cridford reviews 'Ghosts', one of the Freshers' plays for this year.
The one charm about marriage is that it makes a life of deception absolutely necessary for both parties.' The famous words of Oscar Wilde fit only too well with Georges Feydeau's classic nineteenth century farce Where There's a Will
It was always going to be a thrill to see the genius of the celebrated director Peter Hall at work. And Where There‘s A Will certainly didn’t disappoint. The plot centres around marriage and how deceit will inevitably lead to its destruction. Although this sounds like a rather grim issue, Feydeau completely turns the theme on its head to create an outstanding comedy.
Ribadier and Angele are husband and wife, and their marriage is far from perfect. Ribadier possesses the gift of hypnotism and uses this to his advantage by putting Angele into a deep sleep so that he can go about his numerous escapades. Thommereux, an old family friend, appears and we soon discover that he is madly in love with Angele. Thommereux’s hopes for romance, however, seem bleak as Angele repeatedly refuses him. Yet, as Ribadier confides to him that he has a mistress, Thommereux may just have the chance he needs to make Angele come round.
Juggling a wife and a mistress, Ribadier seems to lead a great double life. However, all this is shattered when the wine merchant Savinet arrives to inform him that he knows of Ribadier’s affair with his wife. Ribadier assumes that Angele is asleep during this confrontation, but she is in fact awake and hears every word of it. Furious and eager for revenge, she concocts a story that every time she is hypnotized, she is visited by a lover. What unfolds is a complicated, chaotic situation: Savinet and Ribadier are locked in a duel to the death; Thommereux is overwhelmed with the pangs of unrequited love; and Angele is torn between her feelings of anger and love for Ribadier. The play subsequently climaxes in farcical hilarity.
Some familiar faces took to the stage to give great performances. Charles Edwards, a veteran of farce, gave an interesting depiction of Ribadier. Although Ribadier is a despicable individual, Edwards’ interpretation made it hard not to warm to the character, with his frequent charming asides and amusing attempts to conceal his wrongdoing. Tony Gardner‘s portrayal of Thommereux made him the most farcical character in the play. By exaggerating his gestures and taking the pitch of his delivery to the extreme, Thommereux was a crowd favourite. He earned the biggest laughs with what must have been a very physically demanding performance. His consideration of intercourse with Angele, 'Well I can't do it while she's unconscious', succeeded by a look at the audience and the lowering of an eyebrow, was met with a lot of laughter and applause. Sara Stewart exhibited her range to give us an extreme, irrational Angele who exploded into fits of rage on the one hand and then a subdued, sly wife on the other, who disguises her anger from the rest of the characters.
Hall did depart from the original script, turning some of the lines into asides. This brought us closer to the characters so that we could understand the motivations for their morally reprehensible behaviour. This proved an important decision, keeping us amused in the face of the characters’ awful behaviour. This remained true to Feydeau's belief that laughter was an effective tool to touch the audience’s emotions and allow them to engage with the characters.
The York Theatre Royal was the perfect environment for Where There's A Will. A smaller venue would have diminished the grandeur that accompanies the play's energetic comic deliveries; a larger theatre would have reduced the audience's exposure to the intricacies of the characters’ subtle facial expressions. Though this production did had very few weak points, it did tend to overestimate the audience's patience. The fast pace of the play did keep it riveting and interesting, but, in parts, it could have allowed for even longer pauses to really make the most of its great laughs.
Where There's A Will is running at the York Theatre Royal from Tues 11- Sat 14 March. Tickets are available from the Box Office on 01904 623568 or from York Theatre Royal.
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