The Recruiting Officer ****

The Donmar Warehouse, London

****

"It is a real coup that it never drags, and that it elicits such an impressive amount of good-humoured laughter from its audience; however, both are far more directly attributable to cast and crew’s talent than to the outdated script’s resonance or relevance today."

To celebrate the powerhouse of three young women (Rourke, Pakenham and Danvers) that now lead one of the world’s greatest theatres, Rourke has made an interesting first choice. Restoration Comedy The Recruiting Officer is not only a play chosen from a genre and era that has never yet been produced at The Donmar Warehouse, it also simultaneously seems to subjugate and empower women. Passed as pawns between men, it is nonetheless the heroine Silvia (Nancy Carroll) who calls the shots and literally wears the trousers as her cross-dressing tricks ensure she deceives and achieves exactly according to her wont. It is only the play’s surprisingly sombre conclusion that raises the more serious (and interesting) issue of the seriousness of war, asking us perhaps to also assess the nature of every one of the entirely light-hearted scenes that have been presented before us. Until this point (and, perhaps, even with it), you might be forgiven for thinking that the Donmar’s decided omission of the genre from its past roll-call of successes, and the certainty the theatre promises of great nights out, might serve as more than just a coincidence. For while frisky male philandering was politically risqué and exciting following the Puritannical dearth of theatre during Cromwell’s interregnum, the genre is decidedly dated. Not only are Restoration comedies’ main messages unadventurous by modern day standards, their comedy and frivolous appeal relies on an audience delighted to be thumbing their nose at an oppressive establishment that has trampled on their entertainment for too long. In this liberal and gluttonously entertainment-filled age, I’m not sure how much value Restoration comedies can have when divorced from the relevant political, social and historical context. With this barren background of my personal scepticism (and the recognition that, whatever else it may have achieved, this production did not change my mind), it is quite remarkable to what extent Josie Rourke managed to create enjoyment from George Farquhar’s script of The Recruiting Officer. The word to note here though is definitely ‘create’, for it very much felt as if her direction added to the play, rather than extracting quality inherent to it.

From Designer Lucy Osborne’s entrancingly colourful lanterns abundantly placed about the stage, emitting a lovely warm and delicate glow that infuses the room with warmth and jollity, to extraordinarily talented musicians chirpily playing Michael Bruce’s music at the start and in various interludes throughout the piece, (so successful at creating jollity that I spotted the lighting control lady at the back bopping away to music she must have heard literally hundreds of times), the atmosphere created from the start instilled audiences with good-naturedness. The whole piece feels a few steps up from a pantomime, complete with girl cross-dressing as a gallant and a full set of character types, from the wonderfully blustering buffoon Captain Brazen (Mark Gatiss), simpering lady Melinda (Rachael Stirling) and manipulative maid (Kathryn Drysdale) to a dashingly charming Captain Plume (Tobias Menzies) and dodgy accomplice (McKenzie Crook). The script requires a reasonable amount of direct audience address which Rourke extends to about as much out and out interaction as the Donmar’s traditionally middle-class and -aged audience might be able to take. (I particularly liked the dig at posh pronunciation with the first half’s prolonged discussion of ‘eeyah’ (‘air’) – though I was disappointed to note that in the second half one of these two ladies used the word again without accompanying emphasis). Toeing the line of audience engagement acceptability, there is still the (welcome) sense that this new generation of leaders are determined to shake things up a little and, as such, perhaps the choice of play is more to subtly indicate their departure from the classical choices or realism-driven plays of late, rather than due to any self-evident wondrousness of the actual play. For, although they have made the best of the situation, The Recruiting Officer is a long play, not a huge amount happens, and the witty dialogue is not quite sparky enough – even with efforts made by a considerably able cast. It is a real coup therefore that it never drags, and that it elicits such an impressive amount of good-humoured laughter from its audience; however, both are far more directly attributable to cast and crew’s talent than to the outdated script’s resonance or relevance today.