THE WOMAN IN BLACK

Occasionally a piece of theatre will catch the zeitgeist and garner such critical praise and audience fascination that its reputation is made in perpetuity. There are not many examples of such success but Stephen Mallatratt’s adaptation of Susan Hill’s 1983 novel is one. First produced in Scarborough in 1987, it has been running uninterrupted for over 20 years on the London stage and on its subsequent regional tours. This is testament to its enduring appeal.

On its first performance at the Arts Theatre in this incarnation, a large audience, comprised of a gratifying number of young people along with those folk whom one would more normally associate with theatre-going, approached the evening with a pre-disposition to enjoy themselves. Ready to laugh, ready to be frightened and some even ready to scream from the beginning, there was a clear sense of anticipation emanating from auditorium towards the stage. The expectation created by the play’s reputation was palpable. The audience was not to be disappointed. The production is in fine fettle.

The play itself is a curious beast and is not without its flaws and longeurs [especially in the initial stages] but it works a treat. It has a number of levels of reality through which we descend before the action really begins. It is almost as though we, the audience, are so keen to be scared that the production delights in withholding that experience until the last possible moment. It is provocative in the extreme with information, sentiment, atmosphere, humour and supernaturalism being gently added to the ever-churning mix. The ingredients are slowly melded together and the cumulative effect is ultimately that for which the audience has been craving and is all the more satisfying because of the wait.

The basic premise of the production is simplicity itself. Theatre does not need massive production budgets, slickly operated machinery or star names to be attractive and to do its job. As Antony Eden’s Actor reminds us, the imagination is a powerful ally. With the use of the simplest of sets, a few props, a couple of chairs, a wicker basket, a costume rail and very little else we are transported to a wealth of locations demanded by the story of Arthur Kipps’ terrifying experiences in the small community of Crythin Gifford. We believe that we see Kipps on a train, being transported by a pony and trap, asleep in a haunted house in the middle of a marsh. We experience graveyards, offices, hotels and we hear voices, screams and things that go bump in the night and we believe. It is a triumphant achievement. However, no suspension of disbelief exceeds that of our complete buying into the presence of Spider, the very real but totally imagined little dog which accompanies Kipps in his hours of torment.

Comfortable and secure in their own command of the play and its power, Julian Forsyth and Antony Eden are very good indeed. It is a joy to watch Forsyth blossom from the reticent, slightly bumbling Mr Kipps of our first acquaintance, through a range of characterisations to which, once again, the audience subscribe without a problem. It’s a real tour de force without appearing to be so. Eden’s Actor is full of slightly superior bonhomie which he skillfully turns first to doubt, as he begins his impersonation of Kipps, then to fear and lastly to tragic realisation as the final plot twist and its implications work its way into his consciousness. Not to be underestimated is how lighting and sound design add to the simple theatricality of the evening.

There is a beautiful irony that the audience, whilst being told in no uncertain terms how theatrical effect is manufactured, is completely unable to resist its power. At the end of the evening folk are jumping in their seats, screaming and are completely taken in by the preposterous events to which they have just been witness.

If you like your films shot beautifully using a palette of Cornish seas, breathlessly beautiful landscapes and exemplary period detail then this film could be for you. If you want a true tale of love, liberty and scandal amongst an Edwardian artists' colony in Cornwall painted on a romantic and ultimately sentimental canvas then you could do worse than spend two hours watching this film.

It is the story of how Alfred Munnings, equestrian painter and drunken boor, wooed and married fellow artist Florence Carter-Wood. His success in this amorous adventure was achieved despite the fact that, according to the film at least, Carter-Wood and Munnings’ best friend Captain Gilbert Evans were clearly a much, much better match. Everyone in the film except for Carter-Wood and Munnings knows it and everyone watching the unfolding love-triangle knows it too. It comes as no surprise, therefore, when events play out the way they do.

Thematically there is not much new to ponder. Munnings is temperamental. Well he was an artist and we’ve been told many times that this is so often the way with ‘those kind of people’. Set in pre-war, stiff upper-lipped Britain of the early twentieth century there are class divisions that the artistic fraternity have tried to transcend for generations. Yet Munnings’ humble origins in Mendham in Suffolk [where there is still a pub named after him] play against him as he encounters the more aristocratic heritage and relations of his inamorata. And of course, being artistic, we are offered a group of people known as the Lamorna School whose morality, judged by the standards of the time, was suspect. The film does not baulk at showing both male and female full frontal nudity and there is plenty of good honest Anglo-Saxon swearing.

The problem with it all, though, is that the film tells a story of personal real life tragedy and by committing this to celluloid the creative team have managed to make it rather dull. Despite the beauty of the photography, and some of it is ravishing, the story is a rather pathetic one that demands privacy rather than exposure. In attempting to remain faithful to the real facts of the episode, director Christopher Menaul and screenplay writer Jonathan Smith have squeezed the drama out of it. The result plods beautifully but predictably across the screen.

Munnings was clearly not quite the nicest of chaps. It is well known that despite achieving respectability as president of the Royal Academy of Art in 1944 he never lost his rough edges. Indeed his valedictory speech was given in an evidently drunken stupor whereupon he lambasted the Impressionist movement for having corrupted art. In Dominic Cooper’s hands he is self-opinionated and self-loving. He demonstrates little affection for anyone else so it comes as a surprise when Emily Browning’s Florence Carter-Wood agrees to marry him. Neither actor dominates the screen and neither has the charisma to make up for the film’s deficiencies. He is dislikeable and she is rather wet. It is not, perhaps, their fault. The screenplay paints them into a corner from which they find it difficult to escape.

It is up to Dan Stevens in the role of Evans to rescue the film from this ill-matched and ill-starred pair of lovers. It is a quiet dignified performance that delivers what it needs to do without histrionics. A brief cameo from Nicholas Farrell as Carter-Wood père nearly steals the film whilst Hattie Morahan as Laura Knight, one of the Lamorna group, is charmingly believable.

And a little niggle to finish with. It is hard to achieve plausibly great art being painted by great artists on film. You can’t use the originals and the reproductions are always sub-standard. It stretches the suspension of disbelief to breaking point.

The Cambridge Film Festival screened the quirkiest of documentaries at the Picturehouse as part of the richly diverse programme offered by the Festival. The title of ‘The Lebanese Rocket Society’ is intriguing in itself. A piece of cinema to rival the pretty awful ‘Salmon Fishing in the Yemen’ perhaps? Or a film that depicts the history and politics of the 1970s civil war that decimated the country? Curiously, it is neither of these things.

Directors Joana Hadjithomas and Khalil Joreige have fashioned an engaging, though indubitably odd, film that studies the contribution Lebanese dreams made to the 1960s Space Race. It attempts to stocktake where that contribution stands presently. It also projects what it may have been in the future had it continued to exist.

The project was the brainchild of Manoug Manougian, who was present at the Cambridge screening. He was a mathematics and physics professor who, on an autumn day in 1960, put up a sign on the student bulletin board that read “Do You Want to be Part of the Haigazian College Rocket Society?” From this inauspicious beginning developed the Middle East’s only space project. The Cedar programme saw the construction of pioneering prototype rockets as well as the development of effective propellant fuels to launch the Lebanese contributions into the skies of the eastern Mediterranean. The programme progressed as far as making bigger more powerful rockets which, although never rivalling those of the US or USSR, were clearly sophisticated bits of hardware.

Always an educational and research project, the programme flirted with danger as rockets narrowly missed both Cyprus and a British naval vessel on reaching the end of their journey’s trajectory. By the time these rockets were being launched, however, political tension in the area was beginning to burgeon. This coincided with the Lebanese army becoming one of the project’s partners. Inevitably the rocket programme was perceived to be a contribution to the country’s military programme. Discretion being the better part of valour, the project was quietly allowed to die. No active cover-up seemed to have occurred though some forty years later very few Lebanese have any consciousness of it ever having occurred. A very few pieces of evidence remain in the public domain. A few pictures, one or two newspaper articles and a celebratory stamp is the sum total of the project’s existence.

There is a danger of being patronising when assessing both the film and the project itself. There are several hurdles to negotiate before a true assessment can be made. Firstly, language. It is predominantly made in Arabic peppered with a little French. Occasionally English is used. Not that this should matter much because the subtitling is good. Yet it is a small obstacle.

Nextly, the film assumes a certain degree of knowledge of Lebanese history and politics. For those of us who lived through the atrocities of the end of the last century there is enough residual memory to aid comprehension. I wondered though what the younger members of the audience made of it.

The major problem, however, is to resist the temptation to patronise. Calling the project an idiosyncrasy is unhelpful. The participants were serious about the contribution they were making. Yet the film adopts a slightly quaint stance that portrays the rocket makers as endearing amateurs in competition with the super-powers that dominated the Space Race at the time. 

The film celebrates the achievements yet always seems to suffer from an inferiority complex. Thus the over-powering sensation after having watched it is that there must be a more interesting way of telling what is a potentially fascinating story. It has all the elements of a story that was rolling out at an historically significant time. Yet those elements are never quite formed into a persuasive whole.

The Mikado, as performed at the Arts Theatre in Cambridge on 8th October by Opera della Luna, is testament to the extraordinarily durable appeal of the work of Gilbert and Sullivan. This is not a particularly inspirational production. Occasionally it is clever. Mostly it is barely adequate. At times it is sub-standard. Yet at the end the very small audience applauded with gusto and demanded an encore. This virtually unqualified enthusiasm confounded the expectation of audience indifference anticipated by this critic.

The story is, as with all G+S, totally preposterous. Nanki-Poo, the son of the ruling Mikado of Japan, loves Yum-Yum but a marriage has been arranged for him with the vile looking Katisha. Yum-Yum on the other hand is betrothed to Ko-Ko who has been condemned to death for flirting. Ko-Ko has, nevertheless,  been elevated to the position of Lord High Executioner and his destiny is to behead himself. Then there is Pooh-Bah who holds every authority position in the town of Titipu except for that of the Mikado himself. Nanki-Poo disguises himself as a wandering minstrel and the fun begins.

This production is a peculiar mix of something that feels like a throw-back to imagined versions of the early part of the twentieth century and an attempt to bring it, dragging and screaming, into the modern day. Performances are static, staid and sterile and the songs are delivered with little choreography or awareness of developments in the conventions, conceits and practices of contemporary musical theatre. Yet, on occasion, the production surprises by updating many of the original lyrics penned by the illustrious Mr. Gilbert. In particular “I’ve Got a Little List” in the first half and the Mikado’s big number “The Punishment Fits the Crime” in the second half transcend the dullness of the rest of the production and are genuinely funny.

The biggest problem lies in the rather prosaic attempt to re-envision a production that sees a sizeable light operetta with principals and chorus cut down into something for a handful of performers only. The orchestra, too, is reduced to contain only seven players. The lack of a full sound both on stage and in the pit is hard to ignore. Having no conductor allows for a slight roughness around the edges of songs. The set for the first half looks like it has been touring for a number of years. The second half looks and sounds better. Overall, though, the lack of resource is all too obvious and there is a lack of imagination to cover the deficiency. Bizarrely, for a production that has been touring for a reasonable length of time, there is insecurity in knowing the spoken lines.

The performers split into two camps. As it happens the contrast falls across the gender divide. The women are operatically trained whilst the men have emerged through the musical theatre route. They are very different disciplines and the differences show. Of the first camp, Victoria Joyce makes a good job of Yum-Yum although her sung lyrics are often indistinct. Poor Louise Crane has the unenviable job of being both one of the three little maids from school and the Gorgon Katisha. John Griffiths shows his experience and class as The Mikado and Pish-Tush whilst Tim Walton as Nanki-Poo sings nicely but is under-energised in the spoken sections. Carl Sanderson’s Pooh-Bah owes much to the Panto Dame tradition but he belts out the numbers with gusto and wrings maximum value out of his text.

Come the end, however, Gilbert and Sullivan have woven their habitual magic and the production, despite its flaws and its occasional longeurs, has the audience clapping along, cheering and demanding more.

The problem with The History Boys in professional production is often the plausibility of the age of the young men of the play. There can be no such reservations about this triumphant production that plays at the ADC Theatre in Cambridge until 19th October. The actors, only a year or two out of school themselves, are more or less the right age to play the lads and are, consequently, utterly plausible. A far harder task faces the three performers of tender years who are tasked with playing the three adults in the piece. Their plausibility lies in their commitment to the piece, its humour and its politics.

Alan Bennett’s pen is a mighty sharp instrument. This play is joyously funny, heart-rendingly sad, politically astute, deeply perceptive in its humanity and very, very rude. It has made the careers of many a household name in its time and is the perfect vehicle for the undergraduate actor on which to cut his teeth. History has taught us many things about the individual and about the society in which that individual operates. The perspective that Bennett offers his audience on those events that litter the past is multi-faceted and complex. He poses a number of fascinating questions and offers his audience some significant intellectual challenges. Where does History stop and journalism begin? Is History, as claimed by Mrs Lintott, the play’s only female character, a litany of five hundred years of male ineptitude? Is everything pre-destined or is it all just circumstantial? How can we most properly interpret the events of the Holocaust without either belittling it or misrepresenting it? Do we ever learn or, as described in rather more colourful language than is proper to put in print, is History just one thing after another?

Eight young men having successfully negotiated their A-levels are being prepared for Oxbridge entrance in a northern school. Their further development is charged to the care of the liberal idealist Mr. Hector and the intellectually challenging Mr. Irwin. The juxtaposition of these two teachers is shown in ever more significant relief by being set against the prosaic pragmatism of the Headmaster whose focus is more on positions in league tables and keeping the parents happy than in the quality of his establishment’s educational offer. It makes for great dramatic tension which is only enriched when Bennett sprinkles in that most magical of theatrical ingredients – sex. All very decorous and all implied rather than seen, but, in both hetero and homosexual incarnation it is undoubtedly one of the strong beating pulses of the play. And so it should be when so many adolescents are cloistered together with an ambiguously orientated middle-aged teacher and a young idealistic one. It provides the hook on which the dramatic narrative is progressed and the opportunity for a ton of linguistically dextrous jokes.

The performances are fine. Guy Clark as Irwin and Johnny Falconer as Dakin are a convincing pair of sparring partners as teacher and pupil with a mutual fascination, intellectual and social. Aydan Greatrick plays the pathos of the young gay Jewish Posner with great sincerity and uses his singing voice to good effect too. Jackson Caines is persuasive as the God fearing and loving Scripps who has the best and rudest joke in the play. Strong supporting performances come from the rest of the young cast. Special mention must be made of Tristram Fane Saunders, Jennie King and Matthew Clayton who courageously taken on the roles of the older teachers. The challenge is a great one and they step up to the plate without fear. Hector is a part that demands the cumulative weight and disappointment of late middle age. It is no surprise that late and much lamented Richard Griffiths played the part so brilliantly and definitively. Initaially, Clayton plays under that not inconsiderable shadow. It is all credit to him that he manages to emerge from it and create his own Hector. 

The True Tragedy of the Duke of York [otherwise known as Henry VI Part III] should have been a better experience at Cambridge Arts Theatre than it was.

Being part of a trilogy performed during a single week one would be obliged to visit the theatre three times in one week to derive maximum benefit. Judging by the small audience this seems to have been beyond either the pocket or the perseverance of the average Cambridge theatre-going audience member. Although the play stands up by itself there is the knowledge that without having seen its predecessors one has missed out. It is a frustration more than a problem.

Shakespeare’s Globe is many faceted and nothing if not ambitious. In addition to the work staged in the iconic theatre on the south bank of the Thames in London they send out tours on a regular basis. They play all kinds of venues, quite a lot of them out of doors. Herein might lie the key to a real problem. The production felt as if it were made for a much larger, open-air space. Much of the dialogue was unremitting in its shouted projection that by the end of the play this reviewer was beginning to wonder if the play had any subtle or softer moments in it at all.

The biggest problem though, certainly in this production, is the play itself. There is a philosophical provocation in it that demands the audience consider the anarchy that may prevail when there is a leadership vacuum. Mostly however it feels as if one is being immersed in the bloody history of the Plantagenet monarchy. So many die that by the end one is inured to the individual tragedy of any of them. It has a numbing effect.

On the other hand it is the chrysalis out of which Shakespeare’s awful Duke of Gloucester emerges to become the fully formed Richard III. Simon Harrison plays the crook-back with icy glee. His “I'll make my heaven to dream upon the crown” speech is wickedly portentous.

On a utilitarian wooden and metal set designed by Ti Green, a cast of men posture and shout at each other, swearing vengeance and hatred. They are tempered not by any women, Mary Doherty’s Queen Margaret being even more vengeful and strident than any of them, but by the weak and disenfranchised King Henry. In the hands of Graham Butler the King has a quiet dignity. Contemplative and well spoken it is a much-needed performance that provides a few moments’ peace before the resumption of the onslaught. Even he, though, is seduced into yelling his tragedy to the heavens before being another one to be butchered before us.

There is a very odd directorial decision by Nick Bagnall to try and relieve the persistent death and dying by the addition of some moments of outlandish comedy. They seem incongruous in their surroundings. Despite the skill of the playing of the King Louis XI by Brendan O’Hea, the character becomes little more than a music hall turn with his archetypical French dilettantism and monstrously comic French accent.

There are good things in it. O’Hea’s Duke of York is beautifully spoken and characterised. The clarity of the plot was commendable in what is a complicated gallop through the 15th century royal family tree. The percussive underscoring of the action gave it an insistency that commanded attention. A clever trick with white and red paint denoted which of the characters were of the House of Lancaster and which of York.

But ultimately, borrowing Shakespeare’s words from a much better play, the experience felt like it was full of sound and fury, signifying nothing.

Whilst style and panache permeate this beautiful film by Paolo Sorrentino, it is also touched with a cynicism about life that borders on the genius. Subtitled, at two hours twenty minutes in length, and with precious little narrative to speak of, it is necessary that the aesthetic and intellectual senses be stimulated to the utmost degree. The director does not disappoint his audience with his artistry and his mastery of the form.

Berlusconi’s Rome is the fractured and hypocritical maelstrom of a city that Sorrentino paints on film. It is a Rome depicted in both the honeyed hues of the sun-kissed classical statues that abound and the primary coloured, vibrant, cocaine-sniffing, chain-smoking, high-living metropolis that is so stridently at odds with the beauty. This conflicting yet complementary contrast is the film’s thesis.

The satirical tone is set right at the start. The beauty of the city’s architecture, lovingly photographed by Luca Bigazzi, who won an Italian Golden Globe for his efforts, is thrown into comically sharp relief as an elderly Japanese tourist dies of a heart attack whilst drinking in the glory of the city’s seven hills. It is wickedly funny, profoundly pertinent and a prescient foretaste of what is to come.

We are introduced to Jep Gambardella, a suave, sixty-five year old novelist manqué and self-professed misanthrope, who has taken to journalism of the most frivolous kind. He is seemingly content with his affluent and dissipated lifestyle until he receives news from the husband of his first love that she has died. This awakes in him a destructive self-examination that demands that illusion and delusion be stripped away to discover essential truth. Truth about art, truth about life, truth, too, about death. In the hands of the brilliant Tony Servillo, Gambardella, quietly and elegantly reassesses his values as he meanders his way through the city, encountering and abandoning his acquaintances, or being abandoned by them.

The film presents a string of set piece vignettes some of which are very funny, some virtually epic, some profoundly moving. Contemporary art and religion are very much in the firing line. A naked woman performs a piece of live art by throwing herself headfirst into the wall of a stone aqueduct. A shadowy man has a case with keys to all the most beautiful and private collections of art and sculpture in Rome. A magician causes a giraffe to disappear. A Cardinal, next in line for the papacy, is more interested in discussing recipes than offering spiritual guidance.

Nowhere is the tension between the then and the now more poignantly realised than in an episode that sees a young man who has continued his father’s fascination by taking a portrait photograph of himself every day. These he has mounted on a wall of classical proportion and construction. As testimony to the passage of time and the insignificance of humanity it is ineffably sad and yet strangely uplifting at the same time.

Interspersed with these pictorial meditations on life, we are treated to rooftop discussions on the terrace of Gambardella’s luxurious apartment overlooking none other than the Colosseum itself. The pointlessness of struggle, the inevitability of death, the escapism offered by hedonism, the powerlessness of religion are experienced and debated by a coterie of the well-to-do who would just as soon party all through the night as anything else. And they do party very hard indeed.

Ultimately the film offers little hope. A saintly nun aged 104 strives painfully to climb a stone staircase of immeasurable length on her knuckles and knees towards an unattainable fresco of her saviour. Simultaneously, and to use his own words, Gambardella ultimately recognises his life to be little more than “blah, blah, blah”.

With a haunting musical score assembled by Lele Marchintelli, if this elegiac film is not a masterpiece, it is very near to being one.

It would be churlish to deny that the vast majority of the people who were in the audience at the Cambridge Arts Theatre enjoyed themselves. Though their advancing years precluded most of them from actually dancing in the aisles, the spirit was willing even if the flesh was weak. If you go along simply to have a good time at this tribute show to the music of the late 1950s and early 1960s, you’ll have a ball. If you are inclined to be critical, perhaps you should reassess your reasons for going. Dispense with your critical faculties and then go and have a good time anyway.

The narrative is simple, some may call it clichéd. On the one hand, seventeen year old, straight-laced Bobby is on the verge of adulthood and agonising over his love for Sue, the tart-with-the-heart. She, on the other hand, already very much the knowing adult, is infatuated Norman, the bad boy from the wrong side of the track – in this instance Kent instead of Essex, where the piece is set. Soon to be sixteen Laura is sweet on Bobby, who can’t see a good thing when it’s staring him in the face. Not that anyone should stare at Bobby too much in the face as we are told he has terrible acne. It being the 1960s, all of the young folk are obsessed with the music scene. They all want to be the next Cliff, the next Roy Orbison, the next Hank Marvin. Lennon and McCartney have yet to make it big and are referred to just the once as being away in Hamburg burnishing their soon to be pan-globally lauded style. The adolescents snigger about condoms, “Stop me and buy one”, whilst the older generation are homely and always there in a crisis with a piece of sensible advice.

Laurence Marks and Maurice Gran, best known for their collaborations as writers of ‘Goodnight Sweetheart’ and, notably, ‘Birds of a Feather’ have done better work. This paper-thin story, however, is a great hook for some of the era’s best music. All the great numbers are there from ‘The Wanderer’ through ‘Only the Lonely’ to ‘Let’s Twist Again’ and some forty other songs. There are a couple of good jokes but really the dialogue is just the way into the next song.

The singing is terrific. Stephen Rolly, a recent graduate, has a beautiful voice, which in such a young man is well controlled. He delivers Bobby’s numbers with great aplomb. Louise Olley and Hannah Boyce, as Sue and her best friend Laura, don’t pale in comparison. Olley, in particular, does great work as kind of hybrid creation somewhere between Barbara Windsor and Dusty Springfield. Laura Sillett as Donna, Sue’s best friend and Will Finlason as Ray, Bobby’s best mate offer sterling support. The role-call of principals is completed by the appearance of that old 1960’s rocker Mark Wynter, playing Bobby’s dad and he sings the numbers that made him famous. Of these ‘Venus in Blue Jeans’ still hits the spot after all these years.

The supporting cast are actor-instrumentalists so there is a great sounding band that is supplemented by two saxophone-toting singers, a trumpeter and a trombonist. When they all play together they make a wonderful sound. But perhaps the most enjoyable song was ‘Poetry in Motion’ sung completely unaccompanied by anything except other human voices.

The costumes are period specific and convincing, even if the ubiquitous modern head-microphones strike a jarring note. The set is everything it needs to be. Only the choreography is actively disappointing. The period was full of the most wonderful dancing. One of the perils of using multi-skilled performers is that inevitably one discipline gets lost. In this case it is the dance. People stand and sing, static and wooden. When they do get to move there is a lot of hip thrusting, finger clicking, turning round in circles and not much else. It is a shame.

But it doesn’t detract from the enjoyment of the evening. Go expecting a great concert and you’ll have a great time.

In February 1892 Brandon Thomas’ Charley’s Aunt began its extraordinary and enduring longevity with performances at the Theatre Royal in Bury St Edmunds with W.S.Penley in the lead role of Lord Fancourt Babberley. Imagine then the frisson of excitement whenever the play is performed at that theatre. It’s as if the hand of history is palpably touching the shoulder of every person present. Actors and audience alike.

Creative Cow, the producing company, has wisely chosen to slim the three-hour farce down a little. It now plays at just over two hours and consequently the comedy comes thick and fast. With a cast of only six it is slightly compromised but still provides enormous fun and great entertainment for the full houses to which it has been playing around the country.

In Oxford, the city of dreaming spires, Jack Chesney and Charley Wykeham are in amorous pursuit of the Misses Kitty Verdun and Amy Spettigue respectively. They invite the girls to luncheon with the express purpose of proposing marriage. But, this being 1892, there must be a chaperone or the ladies will be obliged to refuse the invitation. As luck would have it, Charley’s aunt, the exotically named Donna Lucia d’Alvadorez from Brazil [where the nuts come from] is expected. But when she sends a telegram to indicate that her trip has been delayed, plans are put into disarray until the gentlemen hit upon an idea. Their friend, Lord Fancourt Babberley, must don a dress and assume the aunt’s identity. Madness ensues as a parade of bizarrely English characters traverse the stage and the deception becomes ever more difficult to conceal. And then, notwithstanding the content of her previous communication, the real Donna Lucia arrives.

The plot is, of course, absurd and the characters affectionately written as archetypes. Director Amanda Knott has chosen to caricature the whole business and the actors embrace the opportunity to play with a lightness of touch and an arch complicity with the audience. It is a decision that is vindicated as the bright and breezy performances and the witty cartoon-like nature of the production are rewarded by gales of laughter from the auditorium.

The audience are having such a good time that they are hard pushed to notice that some of the social commentary in this farce is pointed. The play, which pre-dates Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnest by only three years, is not as caustically critical of the snobbery and entitlement of privilege but it is not without its targets. Social convention is examined in some detail and is clearly found wanting. Heredity too has fun gently poked at it. As the nineteenth century gives way to the twentieth there is, perhaps, a feeling that this nonsense can’t go on for ever. It took the cataclysm of the Great War to bring the edifice of Victoriana tumbling down. Though inherent in the play itself, these ideas are far away in this production. It is all jolly good knock about fun for an early summer’s evening.

There are some lovely moments. In particular Jack’s proposal scene to Kitty, in which she takes charge, is beautifully handled by Jonathan Parish and Katherine Senior. Senior, in particular, is a talent to watch as she manages the difficult doubling of Kitty and the real Donna Lucia with considerable aplomb. Matthew Townshend has great fun playing three different old men with relish and Harvey Robinson as Fancourt Babberley hits the right note as the reluctant cross-dressing aunt. The cast is completed by Mark Smedley and Kate Sharp who camp it up with enthusiasm

The high point of the whole evening is a very funny, choreographed scene change on the chequerboard set that receives a warm round of applause of its very own. Thomas and Penley would have approved.

Rather like the face of its subject, this film has been constructed with a forensic attention to detail. The problem with it is that, somewhere along the way, its makers have forgotten that it is about two damaged, and consequently emotionally demanding, people. Because they are both characterised as wanton attention seekers neither Władziu Valentino Liberace [Liberace to the whole world] nor Scott Thorson, his some time lover, survive the examination with much credit.

Their story is one that has been told a thousand times before - of a love affair that outran its own course. There is nothing special in that sad state of things, be it the failure of either a same sex or heterosexual relationship. In this case the sugar daddy doted for a bit and the sugar baby revelled in the attention. They may even have convinced themselves, as well as others, that they were actually in love. But when it all goes wrong and Liberace turns his attention to a younger, shinier model of the Scott who he has already had surgically remodelled, no-one can possibly be surprised. The story is as old as time itself and just as predictable and because the two protagonists are not very likeable a hearty exhalation of relief can be sighed as the film reaches its conclusion.

There is not even the intrigue of being ignorant of the denouement. Anyone who was alive at the time, and anyone else who cares, knows that Liberace died of Aids related causes after having denied his homosexuality for decades. His representatives initially told the disbelieving world that he had died of a heart attack. Thus the film cannot pack a narrative punch. What then is left?

Thank goodness for some really impressive acting which kept the film bubbling along quite happily despite its shortcomings. Michael Douglas as the besequinned, bejewelled and Botoxed Liberace gives what must be the acting performance of his life. It is so good an interpretation of the man that he will be lauded with plaudits. Never too camp, never too mercurial, the lasting impression is of a man who has risen above tawdry entertainment only to find that life itself is both tawdry and unsatisfactory. On occasion the characterisation is just so detailed that the effort shows. In particular in the live performance scenes, Douglas, whilst trying to replicate the physicality and delivery of his subject, never quite manages to capture his élan and spirit. Those millions of TV and live spectators responded to something when Liberace was at his height and Douglas doesn’t quite get to the same place.

Matt Damon is very good as Thorson. The portrayal is utterly believable from infatuation through to revenge. The damaged, fostered child is offered love as an adult and takes it. The love however is not simple and Liberace’s demands are such that Thorson soon finds himself on the slippery pole of drug taking and alcohol abuse. Damon takes all of this in his stride as he does a particularly disturbing part of the film where Liberace demands of Thorson that he is remade in his own image. Damon’s skill is consummate in that we understand the reasons the character agrees to such a preposterous demand. There follows a particularly unpleasant section of the film where we are not spared much in the depiction of reconstructive face surgery.

There are two film stealing cameos. Rob Lowe as the plastic surgeon and Debbie Reynolds as Liberace’s bemused Polish mother. With Dan Ackroyd also in the film and the reins in the hands of director Steven Soderbergh, it is as classy a piece of work as you would expect. The problem remains though that it’s a film about two not very nice people and you know how it’s all going to end.