Saturday the 13th of March 2010
French playwright, Moliere wrote the satirical, comedy of manners The Misanthrope in 1666. Here we see it transposed by writer, Martin Crimp and director, Thea Sharrock, into a modern-day British satire. An ambitious feat, however one which I feel deserves praise. Although it is a contemporary re-working, there are numerous references made to the original play through the set, the costume and the language - Crimp’s use of rhyming couplets being the most apparent.
The original plot focused on the life of Seventeenth Century courtiers and satirized the hypocrisy of French aristocratic society. In this production we see Alceste battling with the hypocrisy of the contemporary world. He is both obsessed and enraged by the pretense and vanity of present-day humanity. He desires; “a clean, white space disinfected of the human race.” It is interesting to note that Alceste is the only character that keeps his original character name. This is the director’s way of showing the audience that Alceste is to be viewed as someone who has serious issues with progression and change.
Not only is he the only character to keep his name, he is the only character to remain in modern dress in the final scene, while all the other characters are wearing molieresque, period style attire. He stays in his navy corduroy trousers and crew-neck jumper to emphasis his own belief that the popularization of period drama is a mockery of great writing. It also acts as a way of highlighting the director’s emphasis on Alceste’s distance from contemporary society.
Damian Lewis gave an outstanding performance as Alceste and carried the entire production. His passion was profound and his theatrical experience was extremely apparent. Knightley in contrast, did not live up to the critical hype. The play was sold and marketed on the foundation of her celebrity. The programme itself featured Knightley’s ‘Coco Mademoiselle’ campaign for Chanel and many other images of her. Although Knightley has a vast number of film credits to her name, she is green when it comes to theatre and quite frankly this showed. She was not up to the standards expected of West End Theatre which is quite pathetic considering the fact that she was playing an actress in her twenties. Not what one would call a taxing role for a twenty five year old actress!
Her inexperience was transparent as she repeatedly looked down and away from the audience; the majority of her performance was delivered in a side profile. Her projection was poor to begin with but suffered even more due to her failure to turn her body and face centre. Her American accent was dreadfully high pitched and began to grate on me by the end of the performance along with the awkward and uncontrolled use of her hands. Her poor performance makes Alcestes’ obsession with her unbelievable and unconvincing.
The character of Marcia, Jennifer’s acting teacher from Julliard, played by Tara Fitzgerald also had an amateur tendency to speak upstage and stood with her back to the audience on numerous occasions. She over played the role and constructed a caricature of Marcia rather than a real woman hurt by the betrayal of her student who she felt had traded her integrity for pornography.
The First bow consisted of the cast scattered around the stage with Knightley and Lewis taking their position centre stage. The second bow was made up of the male cast excluding Lewis, while, the third bow consisted of the female cast including Knightley. Lewis came out in the finale and took his well deserved solo bow. I was very glad to see that the true talent in the production was being acknowledged.
This play forced the audience to question the behaviour of humanity today. The production posed this question subtly through comedy and allowed the audience to reflexively divulge the message.
The overall running time of the play was just under two hours with the exception of the interval. On the whole, it was an enjoyable production, with a fresh flare which concluded to a pleasing night at the theatre.
**.5
- C.C Greene
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