FLAT WHITE AND WOEFUL
If you’re going to splash out on a visually arresting finale of assassination, a vivId fire destroying a Norman tower and a lyrical monologue about Lenin, it is wisest to lead up to these excitements with a play that arrests attention. And, ideally, makes some kind of sense. This isn’t it.
Rory Mullarkey’s limp satire on the landowning, moneyed upper classes pimping their ancient homes to Russian Oligarchs just feels a bit desperate, a series of random shots at fish in a barrel. And the Royal Court shouldn’t do desperate: it is at its best with zippy writing , sharp attitude, and a willingness to prod easy thinking and cliché attitudes. Not when rolling over, in a hopeful Christmas season, to something billed as “uproarious” Wodehousian comedy, but which turns out dismally sub-sitcom . There are only rare flashes of inspired spite (the best one being about the Standard Theatre Awards, which is niche but nice).
It’s about an idle spendthrift young Viscount (with a communist housekeeper,, ho ho) whose mother is trying to sell the family castle to a Russian oligarch, while herself fleeing to South Korea with her female accountant who doubles as lesbian lover and badminton partner (I enjoyed the badminton at the start of Act 2 more than the rest of the show).
Of course the Viscount and his mates have a plot to derail the deal by dressing up as oligarchs and pretending they don’t want the castle: very sub-Wodehouse. The idly blokey obviousness of it is irritating: communists are funny, lesbians are funny, Russian accents are funny, Irish housekeepers called Hanratty are funny, so bung ’em in and call it comedy.
I suppose that this play was seen as a successor to 2010’s POSH (which I hated then for a cartoonish unfairness which at the time wasn’t totally deserved, though it has got more so since 2019). But at least POSH was well structured and had a quite good story, and one or two fairly rounded characters. It’s the flatness of these – despite the efforts of Fenella Woolgar and George Foreacres in particular – that makes the play basically so dull, despite a good cast.
The British love-hate fascination with the upper crust works best when – as in Wodehouse or Coward or Wilde or indeed Jilly Cooper – you are able, despite your amused jeering, to share some of their human feelings. Here, you just don’t. And they’re not that funny either. It’s depressing, nd I respect the Royal Court – the writers’ theatre – too much not to say so.
box office royalcourttheatre.com to 16 Dec
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