Reviews 2006
Reviews 2006
✭✭✭✭✭
by Dion Boucicault, directed by Brian Bedford
Stratford Festival, Avon Theatre, Stratford
June 1-October 21, 2006
“The Must-See Play at Stratford”
My simple advice to you about “London Assurance” is “Go see it!” You may never have heard the name of this comedy from 1841 or the name of its Irish author Dion Boucicault (1820-90), but that’s no excuse to miss one of the funniest shows you’re likely to see this summer. You will, however, have heard of Brian Bedford who stars in the play and directs it. The play proves to be the perfect vehicle for the comedic talents of this great actor.
The story centres on the ageing London roué Sir Harcourt Courtly, who intends on carrying out the provision of a deceased friend’s will that he marry his only daughter Grace Harkaway. The country girl Grace is only 18 but she also plans to honour her father’s will since she does not believe in love--that is, until she meets an attractive young man calling himself “Augustus Hamilton”, who is in fact, Sir Harcourt’s only son attempting to flee his London creditors. Meanwhile, Sir Harcourt finds himself less attracted to Grace than to the delightfully named Lady Gay Spanker, who seems to regard her wimpish husband Dolly as a doormat. Egged on by Charles’s enigmatic friend Richard Dazzle, Lady Gay enters into a plot to unite Charles and Grace while shaming Sir Harcourt.
In his director’s notes Brian Bedford is quite right to see “London Assurance” as a kind of stepping-stone in English drama between the late 18th-century comedy of Sheridan (e.g., “The School for Scandal” of 1777) and the late 19th-century comedy of Oscar Wilde (e.g., “The Importance of Being Earnest” of 1895). Indeed, the Beau Brummelesque Sir Harcourt Courtly outfops and outdandies all the fops and dandies of 18th-century drama but finds himself in a new world characterized by Richard Dazzle where a person with no background whatsoever can rise in society through sheer force of wit and self-confidence (i.e. “London assurance”) alone. Not to give too much weight to such a frothy play, but Boucicault does seem to depict the passing of a world where physical appearance and love affairs constitute one’s social capital to a less romantic world where words deceive more easily than looks and money is the ultimate goal. The text is so peppered with epigrams that the play does seem the most Wildean comedy of its period before W.S. Gilbert’s “Engaged” of 1877. More’s the pity Boucicault should have tuned from this kind of comedy to concentrate on the favourite genre of the day, melodrama.
Designer Desmond Heeley, always with an eye for fantasy, has created marvellous sets and costumes. Within the proscenium of the Avon Theatre, Heeley has built a second, highly ornate but faintly decrepit-looking proscenium to frame the action while placing a set of old-fashioned footlights along the rim of the stage. This second frame basically signals to the audience that they are seeing a play from another time period and urges us to appreciate the creaky plot devices and older dramatic convention like the use of asides as enjoyable relics from this period. His costumes are equally fanciful with Sir Harcourt appearing in a sequence of outfits each more outrageous than the last. Lady Gay comes a distant second in her parade of colourful sporting wear. In his programme note, Heeley mentions that his design work on stage only if properly lit and praises lighting designer Michael J. Whitfield as “a magician with light”. Whitfield’s lighting helps make Heeley’s designs look very much like the hand-coloured etchings one might find in books of the period.
Brian Bedford is known for playing to the audience even when a play does not require it. “London Assurance”, however, is absolutely riddled with asides giving Bedford ample opportunity to address us throughout the play supplemented with host of winks, smiles and poses. Only someone who is a master comic actor like Bedford could get away with such tactics but, indeed, the pavonine nature of Sir Harcourt really demands such display. Bedford’s performance is a joy throughout. He milks more humour than you can imagine from a character who is well over 60 but admits to only 40. His attempts to maintain dignity while trying to cover up the numerous back and leg pains of age are exquisitely funny. It’s a performance you’ll never forget.
As director Bedford has brought out the best in the entire cast. Adam O’Byrne is excellent as Charles Courtly, who deceives Sir Harcourt into thinking he is a timid scholar when in fact he is one of the best known rakes of London. Sean Arbuckle has never been better as his friend Richard Dazzle, living up to the name with an effulgent charm and gleaming smile that hide his parasitic ways. Keith Dinicol is in top form as Sir Harcourt’s aptly named valet Cool, who can tell a brazen lie without the slightest change of expression. Brian Tree looks like a Dickensian caricature as Lady Gay’s mousy, hen-pecked husband Aldolphus, who is frequently struck with hilarious bouts of incoherence. James Blendick is quite at home as the hearty country gentleman Max Harkaway, uncle of the young Grace. Only Tim MacDonald’s performance as the lawyer Mark Meddle is peculiar. It’s hard to tell whether this figure of satire is meant to be simply overzealous, slightly mad or both.
Among the women Seana McKenna seems to be thoroughly enjoying herself as the horsy, effervescent Lady Gay Spanker, a model of a liberated woman far ahead of her time who loves the masculine activities of riding and shooting above all things and is game for any adventure. Sara Topham’s comically bookish Grace Harkaway is like a forerunner of Cecily in Wilde’s “Earnest”, except that she repudiates romantic love until Sir Harcourt’s son happens to come her way. Sophie Goulet fully exemplifies Grace’s well-named servant Pert.
While Bedford may be a master of the aside, he has also taught the rest of the cast the difficult task of slipping in and out of the stage action without a hint of awkwardness to address us. Indeed, his great achievement is to have captured precisely the right level of stylistic exaggeration necessary for this piece and to have instilled this sense of style into the whole cast. The resulting unity of style and uniformly high level of the performances are what makes this production such a joy. Let’s hope Stratford will in future resuscitate other such rarities with such magnificent vitality.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Seana McKenna and Brian Bedford. ©David Hou.
2006-06-26
London Assurance