The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich (or The Beau Defeated)
By Mary Pix
Directed by Jo Davies
Designed by Colin Richmond
Music & Songs: Grant Olding
Swan Theatre, Royal Shakespeare Company
Stratford-upon-Avon
Friday 27thApril 2018. 19.30
CAST
Jeff Alexander- Coachman
Areth Ayeh – Lucinda, niece to Mrs Rich
Daisy Badger- Lady Landsworth, a rich widow
Greg Barnett- Belvoir
Graem Brookes – Coachman
Will Brown – Jack, servant to Younger Clerimont
Hayley Considine – Governess
Laura Elsworthy – Betty, servant to Mrs Rich
Sandy Foster- Mrs Trickwell
Ashley Gayle- Footman
Amanda Hadingue – Toni, servant to Elder Clerimont
Richard Hurst- Footman
Solomon Israel – Younger Clerimont
Emily Johnstone – Maid
Tarek Merchant – Chris
Susan Salmon – Lady La Bassett
Sadie Shimmin – Mrs Fidget, landlady to Younger Clerimont
Michael Simkins – Mr Rich, brother in law to Mrs Rich
Sophie Stanton – Mrs Rich
Jessica Turner- Mrs Clerimont
Tam Williams – Sir John Roverhead
Leo Wringer – Elder Clerimont
Aphra Benn’s The Roverwas so successful at The Swan last year that they’ve followed up with another, but more obscure, late 17thcentury female playwright, Mary Pix (1666-1709). The Fantastic Follies of Mrs Rich is a retitling of her play The Beau Defeated or The Lucky Younger Brother, from 1700. Mary Pix’s plays often had eight or nine female roles, compared to an average for the period of two to three. With so many artistic directors campaigning for 50/50 gender splits in casting, Mary Pix has potential for exploring.
Mrs Rich (Sophie Stanton) is a rich widow of a banker, but she craves status. She’d love to be a countess, and was affronted to be addressed as “citizen” by a duchess in a shabby coach. This is the centre of the play and one that rang bells for me. I’ve met a political quota appointment to the House of Lords who insisted on being called “Lady X” and then I’ve spent twenty minutes at a British Embassy reception abroad talking to a young man who introduced himself by his first name. I discovered only afterwards that he was a prince.
L to R: Lady La Bassett (Susan Salmon), Sir John at rear (Tam Williams). Mrs Rich (Sophie Stanton), Mrs Trickwell (Sandy Foster)
Mrs Rich has two card playing cronies, Lady La Bassett and Mrs Trickwell, the latter a very funny visual performance by Sandy Foster. Mrs Rich has a house guest, Lady Landsworth, also a wealthy widow, but far younger than Mrs Rich. Betty is the household servant to both (Laura Ellsworth) and it is a major linking role, with added narrative function.
Sir John Roverhead (Tam Williams)
In pursuit of social status, Mrs Rich has set her eyes upon Sir John Roverhead (Tam Williams) a beau, or fop. Sir John is obsessed with twiddling his elaborate kiss curl.
Betty (Laura Elsworthy) & Lady Landsworth (Daisy Badger)
Lady Landsworth fancies the younger Clerimont brother (Solomon Israel), who is disinherited and living in poverty in seedy lodgings, accompanied by his servant, Jack (Will Brown). You could maintain servants while in dire poverty in 1700. Their landlady, Mrs Fidget (Sadie Shimmin) is a major comic role.
Young Clerimont (Solomon Israel), Jack (Will Brown), the landlady (Sadie Shimmin)
The trouble is that Lady Landsworth tempts him with a dubious past” as mistress of a great man. He fancies her like mad, but is terrified that she is a prostitute. Jack decides that Lady Landsworth doesn’t fancy him because he’s too straight and narrow, and with the aid of MrsFidget and several glasses of sherry that he plies her with, invents a fictitious lewd and lecherous life for him.
Jack(Will Brown) and Mrs Fidget (Sadie Shimmin)
The subplots roll on… then we have the elder Clerimont brother (Leo Whirter), the one who got all the money. He’s a coarse country squire with two Irish wolfhounds (real) and a bucolic servant, Toni from … er, Mummerset (a gender switch to female here). Mrs Clerimont is the aunt trying to resolve the issues of inheritance.
Elder Clerimont (Leo Whirter) and his aunt (Jessica Turner)
So we add in Sir John’s pursuit of Lucinda (Areth Ayeh). She is Mrs Rich’s niece and ward. Her father, Mr Rich (Michael Simkins), is Mrs Rich’s uptight censorious brother-in-law and banker. They didn’t like bankers in 1700 any more than we do today.
Lucinda (Areth Ayeh)
They will all be neatly paired off. That’s the genre. Another given is “the duel”. Here the classic scene (reluctant duellist v savage and belligerent duellist) gets turned around with Mrs Trickwell as the belligerent one, and Mrs Rich as the one who wants to avoid a fight especially when armed with a feather duster against Mrs Trickwell’s sword. Fabulous stuff throughout, and beautifully choreographed.
Mrs Rich (Sophie Stanton)
The production stands upon Sophie Stanton’s performance as Mrs Rich. She has that rare comic ability (I don’t think you can be taught it) of falling out of the play to make a (seemingly) impromptu aside (on chairs, or costume) while remaining in character. It requires total confidence. Sophie Stanton has it, together with an unmatchable rage of comic facial expressions.
The music is a highlight. The Swan has been known for its pre-shows, and here we came in to find the band seated on stage and playing classical “lollipops”. Air On A G String was being played as we took our seats. But the band was harpsichord, soprano sax, alto sax, tenor sax and baritone sax, with a little added percussion from the gallery. They backed set changes throughout. Apparently the original play had two songs, but more have been added. Sophie Stanton does most, in “Good Old Days” 1890s musical style, which I guess is an anachronism with 1700 costume, but then saxes are an anachronism too. It worked.
The brother-in-law: Mr Rich (Michael Simkins)
It’s very hard to rate it. Sophie Stanton’s lead role must be up for best comedy lead of the year. She has several stellar performances around her, certainly Solomon Israel’s Younger Clerimont, Sandy Foster’s Mrs Trickwell, Daisy Badger’s Lady Landsworth as well as both servants, Betty and Jack, and Younger Clerimont’s landlady, Mrs Fidget. The music is striking as are the costumes and back cloths. It garnered a lot of four star reviews. I’m not rating at that level, and I heard more laughs and titters than uncontrolled hilarity around me. Maybe a little sparkle has worn off since press night. Certainly it is four star, if you’re judging production, direction and performance. Sophie Stanton’s performance is an easy five star. But an evening in the theatre is more that, and the intrinsic quality of the play is part of it. It’s not anywhere near the quality of Aphra Benn’s The Rover, or one we saw so recently, Sheridan’s The Rivals. Great plays have an inevitability of the plot flow, as well as great lines. This play lacks both qualities. It’s wordy, and like most late 17th / 18th century plays switches between sections with just two or three characters talking (rather than “doing”) onstage. The era loved convoluted plots twists and turns. Domenic Cavendish said in his 4 star Telegraph review:
Confused? An otherwise informative RSC programme could do with a more detailed synopsis because what starts on a straightforward note rapidly twists and tangles – plotting was to this crowd what poetry was to Shakespeare.
He’s absolutely right. The art of the short useful synopsis was always an RSC strength. A better cast list would have helped. They just give the names, with no information on who they are. I’ve added information on the cast list above.
It felt long, and in spite of very funny stuff, the ending seemed a drawn out 20 minutes of plot resolution. We noted that the RSC online gives it as 2 hours 20 minutes plus interval, but the free cast lists in the theatre give it as 2 hours 40 minutes plus interval. Actually, it wasn’t quite that long, but nearer than 2 hours 20.
Sadly, we both agreed the actual Mary Pix play is obscure because it’s just not very good. It has been used here as the skeleton for a terrific production, but I’d credit the director for making it an entertaining evening rather than the writer. Three stars.
***
ADDENDUM. MRS RICH: THE COLOUR BLIND CONTROVERSY
Elder Clerimont (Leo Whirter) and Mrs Rich (Sophie Stanton)
Quentin Letts’ Daily Mail review of the play sparked a controversy. He said:
Poor Leo Wringer is miscast as the older Clerimont. There is no way he is a honking Hooray of the sort that has infested the muddier reaches of England’s shires for centuries. He is too cool, too mature, not chinless or daft or funny enough.
Was Mr Wringer cast because he is black? If so, the RSC’s clunking approach to politically correct casting has again weakened its stage product.
I suppose its managers are under pressure from the Arts Council to tick inclusiveness boxes, but at some point they are going to have to decide if their core business is drama or social engineering.
The Daily Mail invited a reply from RSC artistic director, Gregory Doran, and The Guardian invited Leo Wringer to reply too. Mr Doran rightly pointed out some great leads by black actors in recent years at the RSC, virtually all of which I saw. The Rivals had a black lead at the Waterside last month, as did The Recruiting Officer at Salisbury a couple of years ago. Both are set in the same time period in England too. It’s not actually colour blind either, as both Clerimont brothers are BAME actors.
Total colour blindness can work seamlessly … I had no problem in seeing Joan Iyiola and Alexander Cobb as twins in the RSC’s previous play, The Duchess of Malfi. I had no problem seeing Ncuti Gatwa as Michael Thomas’s son in The Rivals. Twins is the extreme end … generally colour blindness works fine if we see a child and one parent. As I have said before, if you cast black actors as Claudius and Hamlet, but white actors as Gertrude and Old Hamlet, then our natural tendency to say “He has his father’s face” leads us to whole new plot dimensions. This became apparent where the princes in the tower in a production of Richard III were both BAME kids, while we knew Edward IV and his queen were white. It leads you to think, ‘Ah, so Richard’s accusation must be right. They ARE illegitimate.”
Well, everybody’s right and nobody’s wrong. Mr Doran says that 40% of the London population is BAME. Correct. In the 2011 census 59.8% identified as “white”. Move to the South Bank theatre district and 29.5% of children were identified as “non-white.” But it’s certainly not true of Warwickshire, nor Stratford-Upon-Avon where the RSC reside (does he keep his eye on the Barbican?), nor is it true of Chichester, Salisbury, Poole or Bath where I have counted and there have been more BAME faces on stage than in the entire audience. According to the 2011 census, 86% of the UK population was “White” (a decrease from 91% over ten years), so 14% non-white rather than London’s 40%. I do believe from recent years’ observation that a white male at drama school will have a statistically harder job getting a part than a BAME colleague, because so many theatre directors have called for more ethnic diversity in casting, as well as “50% gender balance,” which means there must indeed be boxes to tick, even if they’re invisible ones. We have to face the fact that Shakespeare often wrote with 16 or 17 male roles to 3 or 4 female ones. So that’s the history. For many years males (then mainly white) were in a tiny minority in applications to drama schools, but were more likely to get a place because they needed at least half males, and so they had by far the greatest chance of being cast. Female actors have noted for years that they faced greater competition to get a place. It’s being redressed, the wheel has spun full circle, though unfortunately sometimes at the expense of the play.
Mr Letts was getting at this point, though singling out Leo Wringer to represent it was unfair, and it was also wrong to suggest that black actors cannot play roles that were historically likely to have been white. In fact Leo Wringer plays it as an uncouth country squire, and there seems nothing in the text to suggest the character is “chinless” in the slightest. Just untamed rural, an 18th century stereotype. Leo Wringer worked very well for us. Quentin Letts has some history on this, attacking the casting of Lucian Msamati at the National Theatre in Amadeus.
However, there is a line. If you had a play about the US Civil War where the Confederate leaders were black, we’d assume a point was being made. We couldn’t be “blind” because the plot involves historical black / white roles.
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:
5 star
Katy Roberts, The Reviews Hub *****
4 star
Michael Billington, The Guardian ****
Domenic Cavendish, The Telegraph ****
Ann Treneman, The Times ****
Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times ****
Debbie Gilpin, Broadway World ****
3 star
Quentin Letts, The Daily Mail ***
Susannah Clapp, The Observer ***
Natasha Tripney, The Stage ***
Michael Davies, What’s On Stage ***
LINKS ON THIS BLOG:
Several of the cast are in THE DUCHESS OF MALFI, RSC 2018
JO DAVIES
The Roaring Girl, RSC 2014
The Country, Salisbury Salzburg 2011
MICHAEL SIMKINS
Fracked! Chichester Minerva 2016
Hay Fever, Bath, 2014
SANDY FOSTER
Fantastic Mr Fox, Nuffield, 2016
The Shoemaker’s Holiday, RSC 2015
SOLOMON ISRAEL
Duchess of Malfi, RSC 2108
The Tempest, RSC 2012
Twelfth Night, RSC 2012
Comedy of Errors, RSC 2012
LEO WRINGER
As You Like It, National Theatre 2015
LAURA ELSWORTHY
The Hypocrite, RSC 2017
GREG BARNETT
Duchess of Malfi, RSC 2108
WILL BROWN
Duchess of Malfi, RSC 2108
ARETH AYEH
Duchess of Malfi, RSC 2108
