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In the 1960s Mishima wrote a play about the Marquis de Sade. What’s it like? It’s like this. A Greek tragedy consisting entirely of choral speeches performed on the radio. The naughty nobleman’s wife and her family are assembled on stage, along with a pair of sidekicks, one a tart, the other a nun, and through the testimony of these blushing womenfolk we hear the details of his rapacious career. Static, word-heavy and often boring, the play is far from a disaster. That de Sade never appears barely matters. He’s in prison, in court, in hiding, in Sardinia, in a hay-loft, in prison again. Finally, after two decades of blood-soaked fornication, he’s at the front porch. Will he come in? No, says the maidservant, he’s so fat he can’t get through the door-frame. Oh, go on, girls, tug him in and let’s have a look. The image of the great Lothario as an ageing lard-bucket too corpulent to squeeze into his wife’s vast mansion got less of a laugh than it deserved and it’s to Michael Grandage’s credit that this unwieldy play has been given such a stylish and spirited production.
The script is an ice-cap with wedding cake decorations. Great frosty cliffs of speechifying adorned with scrolls of florid verbage. Nearly always Mishima reaches for the same imagery. De Sade is a high priest, his seductions are a holy sacrifice, his life is an imperishable cathedral of wickedness. Christopher Oram’s distressed-mirror sets are stupendously lovely and they give the show some much-needed uplift and playful splendour. But one has to ask why the all-star cast signed up for this behemoth. Doubtless each looked at the great mounds of treacly text they’d have to deliver and said yes, yes, yes. Line-counts are like willy lengths to actresses, the bigger the better. The role of de Sade’s wife is well suited to Rosamund Pike’s troubled, fragile-as-porcelain beauty. Better still is Frances Barber as Comtesse de Saint-Fond, an aristocratic Miss Whiplash who relates with lusty relish her flagellatory encounters with the wicked marquis, and who ends up working the docks in Marseilles selling rough sex to sailors for the sheer hell of it. It’s typical of Mishima’s overassured stagecraft that he discards this entrancing character far too early. And what of Dame Judi? On the night I went, a sprained ankle had dumped her in the sick-bay while her understudy shuffled into the frock and frown of de Sade’s scandalised mother-in-law. An interesting performance from Marjorie Hayward. She had approximately 21 hours to get herself word perfect and she spoke many words, some of which were perfect. I wonder if they couldn’t have handled Dench’s crocked leg with a little more pluck and ingenuity. Find a bath-chair, insert a line about childhood polio and let the maidservant trundle the lame dame around the stage.
Nicholas Hoult, best known as the geeky kid from About A Boy, has made his West End debut. When Daniel Radcliffe did the same thing he took the lead in Equus, a weighty psychological thriller which, incidentally, required him to perform naked alongside a stunning blonde, who was also naked. Hoult isn’t quite in the Harry Potter league but there’s something tip-toeingly cautious about New Boy, a fluffy teenage rom-com presented in a studio theatre the size of a moderately large sweet shop. Hoult has grown into a star. He has a quite amazing face and that amazing face has an additional grail-like quality: you want to watch it. He doesn’t need the West End, so why’s he here? Probably for the same reason people go to university. It’s useless but you don’t want to admit you haven’t done it.
The play follows the amorous travails of Mark, a shy outcast whose best friend, Barry, is having an affair with their French teacher. There’s a big mismatch here between Hoult’s handsome swagger and his role as a nerdy Cupid’s reject, and though he’s good on stage it’s impossible to tell from this candyfloss if he might be better than that. Could he be Hamlet? Could he even be Joseph? No idea. The show’s best asset is Mel Giedroyc as the blousy French mistress, Mrs Mumford, who swaps her boring old husband for a teenage toyboy. Her bravura performance shows up the script’s ill-tailored, untheatrical shape. Giedroyc disappears in the second half — when the audience is aching for her to return — and the location shifts hurriedly from London to the Lake District, where a few last-minute discoveries add meat to the lightweight confection. A fun show but shallow as an egg-cup.
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