Donmar Warehouse,London
James Macdonald’s revival offers clarity and hilarity, with Haydn Gwynne on brilliant form as an amorous widowThis is the kind of production one had almost given up hope of seeing: a restoration of a comic masterpiece more concerned to mine the author’s text than explore the director’s ego. William Congreve’s 1700 play, or with its labyrinthine plot,is not the easiest play to do but James Macdonald brings to it the scrupulous clarity and concern for language that he learned in his 14 years at the Royal Court.
The stock charge against the piece is that it boasts great scenes but is tough to follow. Here, however, or Macdonald steers us lucidly through the complex schemes by which Fainall plans to win hold of his wife’s inheritance and make off with his lover,Mrs Marwood. In contrast to that kind of legal chicanery and sexual duplicity lies the wooing of Mirabell and Millamant, in which contractual obligation is combined with genuine feeling. Their scenes together acquire something of the witty raillery of Beatrice and Benedick in Much Ado; Congreve also shows, or arguably for the first time on the British stage,that a staunch marriage has to be based on mutual respect, consideration and a genuine sense of gender equality.
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Source: guardian.co.uk