Morning:
11°c
London faces a wave of bus and Tube strikes that could cause chaos for millions of passengers as unions walkout over pay and conditions
More...
An awesome and ridiculous film that leaves you thrilled beyond the point of your natural endurance
2012
Theatre
The show has suddenly become quite wonderful, and the galvanising factor is the terrific stage debut of Melanie C
Blood Brothers
Music
The British pop music industry may be eating itself but if Muse are the pick of what it can offer the world in 2010 then British music is in rude health indeed
Muse
I was smitten by both Gilberts enormous luxuriant moustache and the intelligence and nuance of this highly entertaining play
I totally recommend Babbo to anyone who is looking for really good and traditional Italian food
Always been a fan but never seen them live. I was ecstatic to be part of this epic event. WOW!
London,
Nicholas de Jongh's rating
Reader rating
Description: Director Phil Wilmott has prepared a decadent bag of tricks for those in search of an evening with the substance of a champagne bubble. But despite his successful run over the last year, it seems that on this occasion the directorial golden touch has eluded him. In this farce, Hugo is the black-hearted identical twin of Frederick, a creature so pathetically lovelorn, you can hear Cupid vomiting. The object of both twins ardour is Diana - so Hugo has decided to play a cross between Pygmalion and a pimp, by dressing up a poor dancing girl as the belle of a party at her father's house in the hope that Frederick will fall for her. Maybe time will iron out the difficulties. But for now, it's a decidedly blue moon that hangs over this production.
Cast adrift: Joanna David as Capulet and Belinda Lang as Mother in Mathias's poorly staged production
Anyone attracted by escapist high-society romances, with countervailing shafts of criticism levelled against the vacuous, hypocritical landed gentry, should be attracted by the idea of Jean Anouilh's 60-year old comedy.
Ring Round the Moon premiered here in 1950 with Margaret Rutherford as a wheelchaired Madame Desmortes, Claire Bloom's ballet girl and Paul Scofield playing her identicaltwin nephews, Hugo and Frederic. It concentrates upon making a fairy-tale dream come true. The convolutions of the plot allow for little tension while love, snobbery and desire run their course.
Frederic invites Isabelle, a poor ballet dancer, to a ball at the ch‚teau, intent upon offering his twin an alternative to Elisabeth Dermot Walsh's impressively malicious Diana - on whom Frederic hopelessly dotes.
Isabelle duly resists the charms of a Jewish millionaire's money, wins a war of words with the superior Diana and ends up in the arms of the man she loves. True to Anouilh's genre of rose-tinted plays, the innocent face down the corrupt and worldly and all too easily demonstrate that the nice can win.
The actors in Sean Mathias's not very well cast production rarely find the light, sophisticated tone that gives Ring Round the Moon its fitful sparkle. Madame Desmortes ought be a combination of worldliness and snobbery, eccentricity and mischievous wit.
Instead, Angela Thorne restricts the role to imperious hauteur. Belinda Lang turns Isabelle's mother, a gushing, social-climbing romantic, into a shrill if amusing caricature. JJ Field takes on both twins, and keeps the cold-hearted Hugo, who rains down a fusillade of assaults upon the vanities of his class, stranded in handsome blandness; his Frederic seems more a subdued wimp than the smitten romantic Anouilh imagined. The best aspect of his performance is an athleticism that allows him to exit stage right and appear stage left within moments.
Anouilh's fairy-tale atmospherics and bittersweet romanticism are belied by Colin Richmond's sets. The rococo winter garden of Anouilh's imagining, "with yellow plush curtains and green plants" , looking out on parkland, is here reduced to a shabby, empty conservatory without any view at all. Fry's translation, with its flurries of overblown poeticism, cannot conceal the deficiencies of this minor Anouilh.
Details are correct at the time of publication - please check with venue before booking.
[ 1 ] [ 2 ]
