16 – 20 June
Noël Coward’s The Marquise was written in 1927 as a vehicle for his friend Marie Tempest in the title role. Since then it has seldom been revived. That may be at least partly because it is set in 18th-century France, a period far removed from Coward’s usual milieu, where stylish upper-middle-class English sophisticates hide their true feelings beneath an exchange of waspish witticisms. Much of the dialogue in The Marquise is of that kind, seeming to belong more to Coward’s own time than to 1735. In this production, director Philip Wilson has taken that as a cue to shift the action to the 1930s.
That action chiefly concerns two old friends, Raoul de Vriaac and Esteban el Duco de Santaguano being unexpectedly visited by The Marquise Eloise de Kestournel, a woman who has been lover to them both in the past. Her arrival serves to bring to a halt the marriage plans the two men have for their respective children.
Has the time-shift to the twentieth century worked? Not entirely. The sparkling dialogue seems very much at home in Colin Falconer’s imposing art deco set, but there are times when characters behave in a manner that belongs very much to that earlier period. There is, for example, a duel with rapiers between Raoul and Esteban that simply fails to convince. It is played for laughs, but it still seems woefully out of place, and a more wholehearted change of time and place would surely have junked it. Another jarring moment occurs when Raoul’s daughter contemplates life in a convent as an alternative to marriage.
However, the quality of the performances does much to compensate for any such reservations. Simon Shepherd’s stuffy, morally inflexible widower Raoul spars very effectively with his much more liberal old chum Estaban, played with élan by Tristan Gemmill.
As Raoul’s daughter, Eva O’Hara is a strong-willed, sparky Adrienne, and the scene with Esteban’s son Miguel (Barnaby Tobias) where they both reveal that they are in love with someone else is delivered with great charm. Adrienne loves the wildly romantic but impoverished Jacques Rijar (Albie Marber), while Miguel is in a gay relationship with a dancer. They don’t want to marry, but what can they do?
Enter the Marquise. In a performance of star quality it is Juliet Aubrey’s glamorous, irresistible Marquise whose startling revelations eventually resolve all the young lovers’ difficulties. Languidly insouciant one moment and shamelessly manipulative the next, the Marquise is a force of nature, and utterly dismissive of conventional morality: ‘Self-sacrifice’ she asserts, ‘is a sterile form of self-indulgence.’ Raoul and Esteban prove to be putty in her hands.
After a fairly static first half The Marquise becomes more energised and exciting, though the aforementioned duel is uncomfortably farcical. In 1927 some critics were bowled over by the play and by Marie Tempest’s performance in particular, but others found it relatively weak. Coward, often self-deprecatory, admitted that he found himself ‘shudder at the impertinence’ of placing ‘a brittle modern comedy in an eighteenth-century setting.’ This production strives to address those doubts, and some will surely feel that it succeeds in doing so. Those who are less convinced will nevertheless find Juliet Aubrey’s magnificent, show-stealing performance will stay long in the memory.
★★★☆☆. Mike Whitton, 17th June 2026
Photog. credit: Alastair Muir
