According to William Shakespeare, the course of true love never did run smooth. According to William Congreve, playwright of Restoration England, by his time it had almost ground to a halt.
And with Love for Love, his comedy of 1695, he had enormous fun satirising high society with that concept. The work has become a classic and in this spirited version, director Selina Cadell and a fine cast, add energetic lustre to its long tradition.
As the vain fop Tattle explains, relations between the sexes are simple if you just remember that all well-bred people lie, and that a women should never speak what she thinks. No means yes, and the rest follows on.
So now for a brief synopsis of a plot which expands via wide-scale duplicity, apparent madness and confused identity. Young spendthrift Valentine isn’t enjoying life. He is threatened with being disinherited, he is uncertain about the love of his beloved Angelica, and his rival in romance is of all people his very father and would-be disinheritor, Sir Sampson Legend.
Sir Sampson’s preferred heir is his younger son Ben. But romance intervenes again, and the wild young sailor strongly objects to Dad’s plans to marry him off to a simple country girl, Miss Prue.
This production is almost a play within a play. It begins with a prop-littered stage as a group of actors prepare to perform Love for Love for Queen Ann.
There is much additional comic business and interplay with the audience: mostly welcome elements which continue throughout, easing shafts of 17th century wit which occasionally fall fast and furious on 21st century ears.
Congreve was a master of blending and contrasting characters, and he’s well served by this RSC cast. Ben and Prue, played by Daniel Easton and Jenny Rainsford, enjoyably compete to be the most unsophisticated. She keen to learn the rules of licensed bad behaviour. He content to be his rugged self, expressed via lively, nautical song and dance.
As Tattle and Scandal, Jonathan Broadbent and Robert Cavanah are sharp contrasts. Tattle a clownish would-be philanderer who always embarrasses his targets: Scandal a smooth operator with a cynical philosophy.
Nicholas Le Prevost gives Sir Sampson Legend a bluff vivacity as he storms through life, never for a second considering others or doubting that what’s right for him must be right.
Whilst as two seekers of sexual adventure, Hermione Gulliford offers serene self-approval and Zoe Waites endless invention.
At the centre of it all Tom Turner charms as Valentine the proud wit tamed by love, whilst Justine Mitchell as his Angelica captivates, holding the stage and dispensing independently minded mischief until resolution is achieved.
And the concluding summary could still put the cat amongst the pigeons in 2015:
‘The miracle to-day is, that we find
A (male) lover true; not that a woman’s kind.’
★★★★☆ Derek Briggs 8th November 2015
