Reviews

The Daily Telegraph

The Way of the World (1700) puts me in mind of the Schleswig-Holstein Question which I had to study at school. It was famously remarked of this historical brain-teaser that only three people had ever understood it, one of whom was dead, the second mad while the third had forgotten it.

One of the many virtues of Rachel Kavanaugh’s stylish and richly enjoyable production is that her staging is so lucid that one feels one is actually on top of what’s going on.

Better yet, she has felt no need to drag the piece kicking and screaming into the 21st century and set it amid the fashionistas of today’s society, as is so often the case now with 17th- and 18th-century comedies. The patronising assumption is that this will somehow make them seem more “relevant”, though the effect is usually to make them seem more remote and confusing.

Reviewing the Sheffield Crucible’s production of The Way of the World earlier this year, which presented the hero Mirabel as a swaggering modern pop star, I suggested that the really radical thing to do now would be to stage the play in period, complete with fans, beauty spots, huge wigs and elegant diction. Kavanaugh does just that and it works a treat.

Paul Farnsworth has come up with a splendidly elegant design, consisting of a host of golden chandeliers and a mirrored back wall, the latter suggesting the characters’ hermetic self-absorption. The costumes are sumptuous, music is supplied by a solo violinist, and the often complex language is delivered with style and clarity, bringing out both its humour and elegance.

The theme of The Way of the World is the possibility of fulfilled love in a mercenary world of arranged marriages, vicious gossip and active malevolence, and it emerges with both wit and deeper feeling here.

Jo Stone-Fewings combines elegant style with a sense of underlying decency as Mirabell, while Claire Price, as his beloved Millamant, brings a lovely sense of bubbly mischief and warmth to her role, especially in the great proviso scene in which the pair entertainingly lay down the terms of their marriage.

The big star turn however is Penelope Keith as the dragon aunt Lady Wishfort, memorably described as “the antidote to desire” and duped into a dalliance with a servant masquerading as a gentleman. Keith is all fluster, flutter and girlish excitement, but as well as being deliciously absurd, she also finds a touching poignancy in the role, especially when she forlornly gazes at herself in a mirror and declares: “I look like an old peeled wall.”

There is hilarious work from Giles Taylor and Christopher Logan as a pair of fops, Richard Clothier brings a chilling malevolence to the villain of the piece, Fainall, and there is a deeply touching performance from Rebecca Johnson as his understandably wretched wife.

This is a production that discovers emotional depth beneath Congreve’s dazzling surface style, and does so with rare confidence and lucidity.