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by Peter Barnes, directed by Jamie Lloyd

Jamie Lloyd Productions, Trafalgar Studio 1

January 27-April 11, 2015

Jack: “Behaviour which would be considered insanity in a tradesman is looked upon as mild eccentricity in a lord.”

   

The first London revival of Peter Barnes’ The Ruling Class (1968) since it first premiered is a triumph.  This is due not only to the roof-raising performance of James McAvoy in the role made famous by Peter O’Toole, but to Jamie’s Lloyd’s pitch-perfect direction and the ideal performances of the entire cast.  This is a must-see show not just for those who have always wanted to see this once-acclaimed comedy on stage, but for anyone who enjoys British satire at its most trenchant.

The play concerns the difficulties of the aristocratic Gurney family in coping with the latest Gurney to accede to the title, Jack Arnold Alexander Tancred Gurney, the 14th Earl of Gurney, (James McAvoy).  The problem is that Jack is mad and believes he is God, specifically the God of love as portrayed in the New Testament.  He abhors the name “Jack”, sleeps on a cross and prefers to be called J.C. 

There is little the family can do.  When the 13th Earl (Paul Leonard) dies in a bout of autoerotic asphyxiation gone wrong, he leaves £20,000 to his faithful butler Tucker (Anthony O’Donnell) and the rest of his estate to Jack.  The 13th Earl’s half-brother Sir Charles (Ron Cook), his wife Lady Claire (Serena Evans), their son Dinsdale (Joshua McGuire) and Sir Charles’s brother Bishop Lampton (Michael Cronin) eventually decide the only solution is for Jack to marry and produce an heir.  Then the heir can be declared the legitimate successor, Sir Charles the guardian and Jack committed due to insanity.  The woman Sir Charles proposes for Jack’s wife is his own mistress Grace (Kathryn Drysdale), who first accepts for mercenary reasons but then actually comes to love Jack.

To cure Jack, the family psychiatrist Dr. Herder (Elliot Levey) introduced Jack to another patient (Forbes Masson) who also believes he is God.  The shock, literally, since this patient believes he is the “God of electricity”, causes Jack’s belief to collapse.  Unfortunately, Jack does not return to himself but now believes he is Jack the Ripper.  The supreme irony of the play is that upper class society finds Jack as an ultraconservative man dedicated to misogyny, bigotry and violence more acceptable than a God of love.

To play such a juicy role as Jack requires an actor of overwhelming charisma, and that is just what James McAvoy has in abundance.  Those who know his intensity only from the screen will hardly be prepared for what he is like in person.  When is enters as J.C., he radiates waves of good will without saying a word.  When he becomes Jack the Ripper his presence fills the atmosphere with menace.  He lends full weight to the Biblical and pseudo-Shakespearean language Barnes gives him, bringing out both the beauty and the satire in this poetic prose. 

While the play succeeds or fails with his performance, McAvoy is supported by a wonderful cast.  As the wealthy Marxist butler Tucker, Anthony O’Donnell frequently comes close to stealing the show with his deliberately rude antiestablishmentarian behaviour towards the 13th Earl’s relatives and friends.  Ron Cook is excellent as the prime villain of the piece who wants to maintain the privilege of the family at any cost.  Kathryn Drysdale is very funny as Grace, a lower-class actress whose loyalties believably shift from her former lover to her new husband, from the solely mercenary to real love. 

Heightening the theatricality of the play are Paul Leonard and Forbes Masson, who are hilarious in the wide variety of roles they play.  Leonard starts out the play as the 13th Earl with a long toast that is a kind of arch-conservative perversion of John of Gaunt’s “scepter’d isle”speech from Richard II.  He and Masson are uproarious in drag as two local biddies who first are outraged by Jack as J.C.’s testament of love, but later are warmly receptive to his reactionary diatribes as the “cured” Jack.  The two are later a treat with Leonard as Detective Inspector Brockett and Masson as Detective Sergeant Fraser, both all too willing to believe anything the upper classes assert.  Masson’s biggest scene is as the frighteningly electric messiah who literally shoots sparks from his hands.  

Like farce, such a broad satire of the upper classes, especially with such a larger-than-life role at its centre, would never work unless it where carefully guided by a strong directorial hand.  Jamie Lloyd knows exactly how far to go with every scene.  Most importantly for farce, he makes certain that the characters take everything they do, no matter how ludicrous, as deadly serious.  In so doing Jack’s loss of faith in himself and Grace’s love for him gain poignancy that only helps give the satire depth.

One might think that such a wild satire on the upper classes might have lost its bite since 1968, but when a character mentions that 1% of the population of Britain owns 70% of the land, we realize the play is more timely than ever now that the gap between rich and poor in the world in general has only grown bigger since the 1960s.  As of May 2014 Britain’s richest 1% owned as much wealth as its poorest 55% and in January 2015 it was reported that just 80 rich people owned as much wealth as 50% of the rest of humanity combined.  For these reasons, this is the perfect time to revive Barnes’s blisteringly funny play.  And for the fantastic performance of McAvoy this is the perfect time to see it.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive. 

Photo: (from top) James McAvoy and Kathryn Drysdale; Anthony O’Donnell; Forbes Masson, James McAvoy and Paul Leonard. ©2015 Johan Persson.

For tickets, visit http://trafalgartransformed.com.