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Theatre
A smart, prickly and rewarding view of sexual and emotional confusion
Cock
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London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Dir: Nicholas Hytner.
Cast: Amber Agah, Hayley Atwell, Nancy Carroll, Tom Hardy, Shelley King, Rory Kinnear, Amit Shah
Description: Restoration comedy written by George Etherege and directed by Nicholas Hytner. A charmer can't tempt a woman into his bed until he dumps his current mistress. Meanwhile he pursues a richer conquest who he hopes will resolve his financial troubles.
Trains: Tube/BR: Waterloo 
Phone: 0207452 3000
Website: www.nationaltheatre.org.uk/?lid=1541
Hayley Atwell's spirited Belinda won't give in to Dorimant's (Tom Hardy) charms that easily
Youngsters find themselves trapped in a web of sexual intrigue in The Man of Mode
I glimpsed the theatrical future last night and it mightily depressed me. For it will be a dumbed-down theatre world, in which period classic drama, with its distinctive voices and manners, cultures and costumes, is rendered contemporary. There will only be easy-on-the-mind, modern-dress versions of the old-fashioned originals.
Are classic plays now too boring, too irrelevant to attract the young, unless dolled up as plays for tomorrow? It increasingly looks as if the National Theatre's brilliant, influential director thinks so.
Nicholas Hytner's admittedly seductive production of The Man Of Mode, George Etherege's 1676 comedy of grubby sexual politics and marriage-marketeering, follows the line of his cleverly updated versions of Henry V and Ben Jonson's The Alchemist.
All decked out in the expensive flash and dash of 21st-century London warehouse apartments, swanky new fashion boutiques, bars and restaurants, Hytner's Man Of Mode swings with modish razzle-dazzle around a plush London.
Dancers, acrobats and fashionistas, as if on leave from a musical or the making of pop videos, athletically cavort between the scenes.
It is conceived to disguise the fact that the comedy was written in 1676, even though much, though not all, of the text remains intact.
That dirty player in the game of sex, Etherege's Dorimant, played by a tattooed, torso-flashing Tom Hardy, transmits a morning billet-doux by email instead of a servant's hand-delivery.
Hayley Atwell's spirited Belinda, who refuses to be bedded until Dorimant gives up Nancy Carroll's smitten Mrs Loveit, rushes from his apartment by taxi, not sedan chair.
Mobile phones keep sexual intriguers on message. Rory Kinnear's gravely ridiculous Sir Fopling Flutter, the evening's comic hit, attired in French style with tasselled trousers and accompanied by a posse of dancing hoodies, makes a pleasingly fatuous fashion-victim.
Eros, in Etherege's Restoration-style imagining, is given a disconcerting face transplant instead of a facelift.
I like modern-dress renderings of classics that point to parallels between times past and present.
Etherege's increasingly classless London, when well-heeled youngsters pursued sex as if supplies of it were running out, enjoys affinities with ours. Yet Etherege's heart and spirit, his scepticism about the sexual hurly-burly, is lost.
The play shows how youngsters spin a web of sexual intrigue and find themselves trapped in it. This is a society of deceivers and the deceived - like Madhav Sharma's boisterous Old Bellair - where everyone is on the make.
That velvety cynic, Dorimant, delights in manipulative guile as he moves women like pawns on a chess-board. He dangles the pent-up Mrs Loveit on a string, draws her false friend, the scheming Belinda, into his game plan and then apparently finds true fascination in the bland shape of Amber Agar's Harriet.
These dark undercurrents are glossed over in a production celebrating rather than condemning Etherege's materialist London high society.
Its comedy misses out on cut and thrust. Handsome Hardy makes Dorimant a cocky toyboy rather than a practised lecher.
He catches Dorimant's narcissism but none of his exploitative nastiness. His persistent gesticulations and swallowed phrases betray unease. A final directorial touch, which nicely shows Dorimant turning from Harriet to an attractive stranger, highlights a Don Juan-style obsessiveness that Hardy never conveys.
Nancy Carroll makes Mrs Loveit's sexual jealousy farcical rather than pathetic. It is Bertie Carvel's gay Mr Medley, a quizzical hand-on-elbow observer, who catches a whiff of original Etherege - lost in 21st-century vapours.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
I agree with Nicholas de Jongh. Whilst the relocation of the play to contemporary Soho makes it, superficially, more resonant with a modern-day audience, the themes of love, lust, betrayal and hurt were not adequately communicated by the actors. It was like a fashion magazine:- beautiful creatures and pleasing to the eye, yet, effete and unsubstantial. Rory Kinnear's Sir Fopling Flutter at least brightened up the performances.
- Sean, London, UK
This is one of the most tedious, poorly constructed productions I have seen in over ten years of theatre-going at the National Theatre. In an ill-judged attempt to update the play for a younger audience, the language has been not so much adapted as destroyed with embarrassingly naff contemporary references. The acting is fine although ofen over-simplified for no apparent reason, and frequently the stage-traffic is muddled with people wandering on and off the stage almost at random. The saving-grace of this production is the music and choreography, which are highly enjoyable in their own right but largely irrelevant to the play. A real disappointment.
- David Jones, London
This production carries on where Hytner left off with the recent production of The Alchemist, with all Jonson's influences on Etherege intact in terms of sharp plotting and world weary satire. I don't know what Mr de Jongh wants. If it played in period costume to half-empty houses he'd be asking why the NT isn't trying to attract a young theatre audience. I thought the production was excellent: savvy and sexy in about equal proportions and good performances all round. I heard every word but it is a perrenial problem at the Olivier if you're in the wrong seat. Certainly Dorimant could have been played nastier and Hardy's gesturing was a bit irritating at times, but this is Restoration drama that is great entertainment, not just for the archivists. What I was upset about was the amount of text that HAD been changed as this is definitely cheating. A director's challenge is to make the original dialogue work in a contemporary production. Messing with it is a cop out. However, bringing on the blonde at the end was a nice move to strengthen what is otherwise a bit of a let down Etherege's script.
- David, London, UK
Totally disagree with Nicholas de Jongh, A play like this needs modernisation so that it can be introduce to a new generations and more enjoyable if it relates to today's society and culture, (the play was written back in the 1600s why not modernise it? I would be more angry if the language was changed, then de Jongh would have a point). Plus Tom Hardy, Hayley Atwell and Rory Kinnear (steals the show) were excellent. If you can get a Ticket go and see, really Funny! Ladies you'll be taking notes on the shoes the women all wear!
- Nicci, London, UK
Full of frivolity and a sparkling wit, Nicholas Hytner's production of George Etherege's The Man of Mode is a must-see at the South Banks’ National Theatre. Tom Hardy portrays a charismatic and insatiable Dorimant with Rory Kinnear as a comically endearing Sir Fop. It is truly reflective of today's young London rich and their pursuit of the latest clothes, the latest gossip and each other’s bodies: “Constancy at my age! It is not a virtue in season: you might as well expect the autumn fruit to ripen in the spring” There is funky scene-changing choreography by David Bolger to enjoy while following Dorimant’s ploys to seduce his women. Apart from a female northern accent, which strangely kept crossing the Pennines, a thoroughly-enjoyable evening.
- Jane Radford, London, UK
