The Old Vic’s production of Arcadia by Tom Stoppard has a vital component missing. The house. Stoppard’s brilliant historical comedy is set in a country manor owned by the Coverly family and the script examines, among other things, the evolution of decorative taste during the 18th and 19th centuries. But no architecture is present on stage.
The audience has to imagine what the show fails to supply because the Old Vic’s interior has been redesigned ‘in the round’ with a central playing area encircled by pews as seats. This leaves no room for a large-scale set. Arranging the venue like a boxing ring ensures that parts of the action are invisible to parts of the audience. It might have been wiser to use the original ‘end on’ configuration which gives everyone a clear view of the action and allows a designer to convert the playwright’s ideas into reality. Shows performed ‘in the round’ often look patchy and unloved.
The play opens with a tutorial between a handsome scholar, Septimus (Seamus Dillane), and his sparky young pupil, Thomasina (Isis Hainsworth), which becomes a subtle and delicate lesson in sex education. Thomasina has spotted Septimus in a clinch with another man’s wife and she demands to be told what was happening. She knows the answer already, of course, but her plan is to tease her tutor by forcing him to set out the facts of procreation. This wonderfully witty first scene opens up the play’s themes of literary investigation and the elusive nature of truth.
Then we switch to the present day and we meet an academic detective, Bernard, who believes that Lord Byron was present at the house in 1809. His theory is that Byron challenged an obscure playwright, Ezra Chater, to a duel and fled the country after shooting his opponent dead. If true, this discovery would transform Bernard’s career and turn him into a world-class Byron scholar. While he investigates the alleged homicide, Bernard conducts a tepid romance with a literary hack named Hannah but their flirtation is too chilly to catch our interest.
The play’s centrepiece is a bravura lecture delivered by Bernard in which he expounds his theory like Poirot unmasking the culprit at the close of a murder mystery. It’s good fun to watch but there’s no chemistry between the performers. Hannah (Leila Farzad) seems bored rather than aroused by Bernard. And Prasanna Puwanarajah can’t muster the right sort of dreamy intellectual energy for Bernard. His greying beard and frumpy M&S clothes don’t help. He comes across as an irascible town planner rather than a famous critic with a fan club of adoring females who hang on his every word. The stars of this production are Isis Hainsworth and Seamus Dillane. Great careers await them.
Monstering the Rocketman, written and performed by Henry Naylor, looks at an obscure tabloid feud from the late 1980s. The editor of the Sun, Kelvin MacKenzie, chose to pursue Elton John over alleged dalliances with teenage rent boys and he ordered a clueless young reporter, ‘Lynx’, to dig up the dirt. Naylor succeeds in making Lynx engaging and friendly. He’s an ambitious kid from outside London who dreams of becoming a star tabloid hack and he acquires a satirical nickname from his habit of dousing himself in deodorant after an all-night booze-up with his fellow hacks.
The stars of this production are Isis Hainsworth and Seamus Dillane. Great careers await them
The show offers a simplistic and unflattering glimpse of life at the Sun during its glory years. MacKenzie is portrayed as a ranting, foul-mouthed bully with a taste for linguistic curiosities. He retains an elderly hack whose sole function is to answer his questions about the niceties of English. ‘What’s the collective noun for ferret?’ he yells. ‘A business’, comes the answer. Lynx hears a rumour that Elton John is conducting a secret affair with a gay friend in America and he chases him to Heathrow airport where Concorde is about to take off. MacKenzie tells Lynx to buy himself a ticket and to block book every other available seat to prevent rival hacks from getting the scoop. No expense spared. Lynx pursues Elton to a small town in Indiana where he learns that the gay romance is nothing of the sort.
Elton is revealed as the moral hero of the tale and when he threatens to sue the Sun he wins a grovelling apology and a big wad of cash. Anyone considering a life in journalism should see this show. Lynx has all the right qualities in abundance: energy, persistence and a fabulous work ethic.
The show was warmly received in Edinburgh last year where it won five-star reviews and a Fringe First award. The London critics have failed to lavish it with praise. Here’s the difference. In Edinburgh, the reviewers are enjoying a free holiday. In London they sustain themselves from their own pockets. Evidently, it colours their mood.
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