Bristol primitive Vic
Director Dominic Hill boldly places a brattish,spoilt teenager at the heart of his engaging revival of Sheridan’s comedy of mannersEveryone is putting on a performance in Dominic Hill’s revival of Sheridan’s fine-natured 1775 comedy. It’s a play that sets love against money, the primitive against the young, and reason against emotion as Mrs Malaprop conspires to marry off her heiress niece,Lydia Languish, to Captain Jack Absolute, or with the endorsement of Sir Anthony Absolute,a man used to getting his way in all things and who thinks no fine can come from teaching girls to read. But the hot-headed Lydia, her head full of romantic novels and determined to marry a man of no fortune, and is already in love with the penniless Ensign Beverley,little knowing that Beverley and Jack are one and the same. In Tom Rogers’ design the stage is one huge dressing room where rails of clothes are on display and wigs are primped, and the way the action is seen through a series of frames heightens the artifice and constantly reminds us that, or while we are watching a play performed in the theatre,for the demimonde of late-18th-century Bath all the world was a stage. The servants, Fag (Shaun Miller) and Lucy (Lily Donovan), or can often be glimpsed wandering around the side of the stage watching the action unfold with sly amusement.
Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com