Forgoing the rapier in favour of the scimitar, Director, Tinuke Craig, lays out his stall at the outset as the cast emerge from the bowels of the stage, frozen caricatures, absurd and outlandish as if embodying the subjects of the satirical caricaturists of the time. These are such as Rowlandson might have lampooned. Redeeming features would seem to be scarce and have to be teased out as the plot unfolds. Foibles and eccentricities are laid on with a trowel. Speech is florid and self-conscious whilst gesture leans to the grotesque. The general tone of the production is thus one of burlesque. And should we forget where some of the wealth on display originates, our current sensibilities are acknowledged when any reference to investments in the East India Company, who had by now expanded operations into the transatlantic slave trade, are urged to be delivered sotto voce as befits mention of unpalatable truths. The point being, one supposes, that this is a society so far down the road of moral depravity that any chance of redemption is remote.

There is nothing so interesting as the lives of others and if the others happen to be the celebrities of the age so much greater is the interest. Moreover if the gossip is salacious so much the better but whether it’s true or not, has been and undoubtedly still is, of secondary interest. The malicious gossip which we find today seeping through the internet is but a technological version of the maliciously waspish letters delivered (to members of the audience) by Snake (Tadeo Martinez).

Much of the dialogue is delivered expansively to the audience. When Joseph Surface (Stefan Adegbola) poses to deliver one of his ‘sentiments’, he is wittily illuminated as if by a beam from on high. Back on earth when Lappet (Jessica Alade) has had enough of the disgraced Joseph she tells him to ‘Fuck off’ and in similar manner tells one of the women to, ‘Keep your wig on!’

The music of D.J. Walde gives us equally a sense of the overlap between the eighteenth and our own century, Lady Sneerwell being a would be influencer of the ‘in crowd’ at the time of the play’s setting. Alex Lowde’s candyfloss pink set and florid costumes speak of nothing less than extravagance and excess elevated to the point of absurdity. Lady Sneerwell (Siubhan Harrison) we find for the most part walking crablike, sideways, as dictated by her dress, with arms extended like elegant claws. And a glittering Sir Benjamin Patrick Walshe McBride) not so much as walks as writhes across the stage as if picking his way through treacle.  The highly stylised production is a pink slap in the face that will not easily be forgotten.

★★★☆☆   Graham Wyles  10 July 2024

Photo credit: Marc Brenner