Credit: Manuel Harlan
Anticipating the escalating farce of the Restoration comedies, Thomas Middleton’s deliciously filthy 1605 comedy is hardly an exercise in subtlety. What makes Sean Foley and Phil Porter’s adaptation for the RSC – first staged in 2013 and now at the Barbican as part of a touring revival – such joyfully good fun is how the pair have succeeded in taking the nudging and winking and ramping everything up by a hundred percent.
Sex and money, of course, are at the heart of every name, plot and sniggering innuendo here, as a chorus of coitus-obsessed scally-wags, fops, cheating wives and prissy husbands contrive ways to get their end away. Middleton gleefully satirises the society of his day, the play populated by the kind of randy upper-class characters who still have plentiful mileage today.
The decision to set the play in 1950s Soho pays dividends, with the red-light allure of London’s back-street hedonism – the sex and soul music spilling out of dimly-lit bars – providing the perfect backdrop to the machinations of prostitutes and priests. Designer Alice Power’s flexible set gives us high-impact visuals, capturing an era memorialised in celluloid.
As director, Foley brings a reflexive knowingness to his staging of – and his and Porter’s additions to – the play that heightens the farce without being too clever. Just as Middleton riffs on established stereotypes, so the characters here exaggerate the tropes of the genre. It’s less about traditional comic-timing and more about playing with our expectations of the rules. A dustbin-related pratfall just gets funnier, the longer and more absurd it gets. And the newly minted names like Littledick? More of the same.
The cast rise to the challenge – snigger – beautifully. As Penitent Brothel, who’s obsessed with getting Mrs Littledick (a wide-eyed, exasperated Ellie Beaven) into bed, Dennis Herdman is a blustering frenzy of a man, a Captain Darling-esque Punch cartoon. His fluster is matched by the cool pragmatism and wit of his co-conspirator, Sarah Ridgeway’s prostitute, Truly Kidman, who runs rings around every man in the play, whether dressed as a nun or pretending to be dying.
Foley carefully shifts the dynamics so the female characters aren’t viewed from a distance: their actions aren’t for the pleasure of furtive pocket-fiddlers. They’re bright and independent, pursuing their own goals while the men bring about their own downfalls. Only Joe Bannister’s Dick Follywitt comes close, gradually swindling his libidinous uncle Sir Bounteous Peersucker out of every penny of his substantial wealth.
There are times when the joke wears a little thin and the boisterous meta-theatricality becomes just a bit deafening; but this is a rollickingly good ride, tapping into a rich vein of bonkers humour and accompanied by a band whose bluesy swagger is perfect for this production’s full-blooded irreverence.
