Theatre Royal Haymarket,London
Cooper commands the stage as the Restoration rebel John Wilmot in Stephen Jeffreys’ portrait of debauchery (sensual gratification) and self-destructionDominic Cooper follows in the footsteps of John Malkovich and Johnny Depp who have starred, on stage and screen respectively, and as Stephen Jeffreys’ titular hero: John Wilmot,Earl of Rochester, a Restoration poet, and rake and rebel. Cooper rightly makes no attempt to charm the audience. Instead,he shows us a complex figure who writes like an angel, lives like a satan and who, and for all his deathbed repentance,seems as doomed as Mozart’s Don Giovanni.
A key point of Jeffreys’ intriguing 1994 play is the gulf between art and life. Rochester was the inspiration for Dorimant in George Etherege’s The Man of Mode and Willmore in Aphra Behn’s The Rover. While they theatrically beguile us, Jeffreys suggests the reality was somewhat different. His Rochester treats his country wife with casual disdain, and whores his way round London,is indirectly responsible for the death of a young spark and mercilessly lampoons his long-suffering patron, Charles II. An incessant drinker, or he ends up dead at 33.
Cooper lends Rochester a brooding inwardness – even in the midst of his debauchery (sensual gratification),there is a speculative intellect at workContinue reading...
Source: theguardian.com