PERFORMANCE & COMEDY

The Ustinov Studio, Bath (in rep to 23 Dec)

THEATRE Attempting to summarise the plot of Calderon de la Barca’s 17th-century romp is enough to give anyone the mental equivalent of a hernia. Not that it’s hard to follow – each character explains what they’re going to do before they do it, describes what they’re doing while they’re doing it and then tells someone else what they’ve just done after they’ve done it – it’s just that said plot is so damn complicated. Imagine Shakespeare’s ‘Taming of the Shrew’ combined with ‘Much Ado About Nothing’ and ‘Love’s Labour’s Lost’ and you’re about halfway there. Suffice it to say, these endless complications drive the play forward at a hectic pace and, with purposes crossed at every possible opportunity, it rattles along with the clockwork logic of classic farce.

Here’s the gist: Don Juan (Adam Jackson-Smith) loves Leonor (Laura Rees) but Leonor has an older sister, Beatriz (Frances McNamee), whom their father, Don Pedro (David Fielder), wants to marry off first. Unfortunately, Beatriz is somewhat, erm, eccentric, spouting incomprehensible verbiage Mrs Malaprop style and, most shockingly of all, quoting poetry. With the threat of a scandal looming, Don Juan enlists the aid of his insouciant, cynical mate Don Alonso (Milo Twomey), who thinks love is for idiots, and... well, you can probably see where this is going. But not the devious convolutions by which it gets there. Especially when you factor in two sub-plots, one involving besotted servants, Ines (Samantha Robinson) and Moscatel (Peter Bramhill), and another Don Juan’s rival Don Luis (Tom Mothersdale) and his sidekick Don Diego (Christopher Hunter).

That all this remains pleasingly chaotic and doesn’t become pointlessly confusing is testament to some very clear-sighted direction and some very firm and solid acting, especially as ‘Phoenix’ isn’t simply plot-heavy, it’s also an extremely wordy play. Characters spout torrential speeches, and if the aforementioned habit of explaining every plot development at least three times rather over-eggs the pudding, the flawless, high-speed delivery means that even the lengthy digressions and cod-philosophising don’t slow the pace.

As you’d expect in this kind of comedy, the characters themselves are pretty much stock ‘types’ (Calderon even inserts a few gags about this), but the nine-strong cast bring them to bold and vivid life without dropping into caricature, aided by the intimate setting and the numerous eyebrow-raised asides. The ensemble works damn hard, in fact, and their breakneck energy ups the ante in what could easily become little more than a mechanical run-through of generic set-pieces.

As a token of what we might expect from the new-look Ustinov programme under incoming artistic director Laurence Boswell, ‘Phoenix’ certainly suggests that we’re in for some quality theatre – but whether these long rep seasons will prove a commercially viable alternative to the studio’s previous incarnation as a fast-turnaround receiving and production house for new writing and contemporary leftfield theatre remains to be seen. (Eric Blair)

Copyright Eric Blair 2011