Considering Oliver Cromwell had banned all entertainment other than sermons just a few decades previously, it is pretty remarkable how risqué William Congreve’s 1700 comedy ‘The Way of the World’ still feels today.
There’s no shagging, obviously, but the way in which characters casually talk about their numerous affairs and dead-eyed emotional entanglements feels startlingly cynical even in our current, jaded epoch.
James Macdonald’s almost aggressively naturalistic revival is a fascinating window into another time and mindset, but I’m not sure it makes a great case for the play. Josie Rourke’s tenure at the Donmar had a stonking great hit at the start with another Restoration comedy, ‘The Recruiting Officer’, in which great pains were taken to dial up the comedy. But Macdonald turns it down, allowing Congreve’s verse room to breathe, but also throwing us at the mercy of a plot so labyrinthine it feels like a year’s worth of poshed up ‘EastEnders’ storylines shoved down your gullet at once.
It’s essentially about the very complicated love lives of some mad fops, and Macdonald’s pointedly straight production has the effect of underscoring how inscrutable –or even actively repulsive –their motives are. But the director rightfully has faith that his remarkable cast can connect the play to the present.
Justine Mitchell deserves some sort of special medal for nailing the elegant, imposing, charmingly jagged Millament less than a fortnight after concluding her run in a very different type of love story, the National Theatre’s ‘Beginning’.
The gangly, clownish Haydn Gwynne is extremely funny as Lady Wishfort, a fruity old dear who allows herself to be ensnared in an absurd emotional con job involving a fake aristocrat.
And Fisayo Akinade is scene-stealingly hilarious as uber-dandy Witwoud, whose wildly overstated attempts at worldly wise sophistication are fatally undercut by the arrival of his lumbering brother Sir Wilfull Witwoud.
And it’s all further elevated by some truly spectacular period costumes, courtesy of designer Anna Fleischle (for the first time in my life I wonder if I should invest in a frock coat).
Great as the cast are, they often feel embroiled in a struggle with Congreve’s language (magnificently acerbic though it can be). But a sort of agreeable anarchy takes root in the second half, as the Gordian knot of plot starts to unravel and the characters’ arch façades begin to thaw – the ending is kind of sentimental, but we’ve earned some relatable emotions by that stage.