Lloyd Evans
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Things aren’t helped by Patrice Naiambana in the central role of Gower. Naiambana has no trouble elucidating the verse. Quite the opposite. He throws himself into every line, every word and every syllable. The problem is volume. His performance is a sort of rocket-fuelled manifesto for his evident belief that he is the finest comedian ever to plant his feet on a public stage. His favourite moments are the passages of topical jokes and improvised satirical comment which have been added, presumably, to please the multitude. And they do. Claptrap works but it is just claptrap. And around the edges of this shambles prowls Corin Redgrave, a tired, wasted and rather noble exquisite, like a darted lion waiting for the tranquilliser to kick in. I shudder to think what he makes of this fanciful experiment.
The production, I should add, makes strenuous efforts to attract a younger audience. There are circus stunts, madcap acrobats, muscular supermen dangling from high wires. It’s all very impressive and irrelevant. And it doesn’t even succeed in its popularising purpose. On the night that I went, I saw a crowd of school children watching with expressions of pained bewilderment, exactly the look that kids wear when receiving their inoculations. Unfortunately, they were being inoculated against Shakespeare.
The Olivier’s big summer disappointment is The UN Inspector, a vain, silly and histrionic reworking of a dated comedy by Nicolai Gogol. Writer/director David Farr uses the National’s stage to hammer home his not-terribly-interesting prejudices about exploitation and capitalism. Excellent performances from Geraldine James and Jonathan McGuinness, and a splendidly ingenious set by Ti Green, are not enough to compensate for a shallow, preachy script. Yet again the Olivier’s stage proves too large even for a company of 25 actors. Social comedies like this are entirely defeated by its vast and vacant spaces. Even a Shakespearean battle-scene looks like a catfight in a pub carpark. There’s no reason not to rebuild. Shove the playing area back by ten yards and put in an extra hundred seats.
Better news at the Donmar. This Is How It Goes is the kind of exquisite theatrical frippery with which Somerset Maugham used to delight the smart London set. It’s pretty cheap to stage, too — three actors, two sofas and a pot plant — so if the Donmar is sold out, don’t panic. It’ll run till Christmas in the right West End venue. Neil LaBute’s jokey and loquacious dialogue is a seductive joy to hear. There are excellent performances, especially from Ben Chaplin, once an indifferent sitcom actor who has blossomed into a heart-throb with all the quirky charm of a major Hollywood lead. One might even call him the next Hugh Grant but that would make stardom sound like a bus service. What the hell. He is the next Hugh Grant. And stardom is like a bus service.
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