It is over thirty years since Pinero’s 1890 comedy about upper-class family who have run into massive debt was last seen in London. It now gets a lively and sumptuous revival at the Menier directed by Paul Foster in an adaptation made by Nancy Carroll that cuts some of the characters and lesser subplots and deletes or amends some references that today’s audiences are unlikely to understand.
Pinero titles each of his four acts and—inspired perhaps by the fact that Sir Julian Twombley, the titular minister, is an amateur flautist—Foster opens each with a song to match them, played and sung by the company, which sets a style of theatrical indulgence that the audience warms to.
Sir Julian is concerned he’s going to get grilled in Parliament; he has already been criticised in the papers. Has it got out that he is in debt? It is true: his family owe money, rather a lot as it happens. His wife, Lady Katherine (Kitty), has had the place lavishly decorated. Stage designer Janet Bird has done a great job in representing that. There are lovely dresses too, the height of 1890 fashion, but Kitty is now way behind in paying her dressmaker. Her son Brooke also owes money to tradesmen and has mounting gambling debts. But there is a glimmer of hope. That same dressmaker, Miss Fanny Lacklustre (Gaylustre when first staged, I don’t know why changed), may be able to help: or rather Bernard, her moneylender brother, could.
The Lacklustre siblings are desperate social climbers. When Fanny comes to call in the morning, she may be a tradesperson, but on an afternoon visit (differently attired), she expects to be treated as a lady. She will pressure Lady Katherine (blackmail might be more accurate) to aid Bernard and her to advance into high society.
The action begins on the day that the Twombley’s daughter Imogen is presented at court as a debutante. It is the same day that Imogen’s cousin and childhood playmate Valentine returns from a long absence travelling around the world. He describes himself as “an unkempt colonial with the scent of an animal” who wants escape from society’s formal strictures. Valentine cuts a romantic figure, and his closeness to Imogen is soon rekindled, but her aunt Dora has other plans for her impecunious niece. With the eccentric Lady Macphail, she is brokering a marriage with rich but comically monosyllabic Sir Colin Macphail. The final two acts will take place in their castle in Scotland.
Those two main strands of the story overlap with the outcome sometimes seeming disaster and all rushing by in a gallop of gossip and contrivance.
Nicholas Rowe is a restrained but worried Sir Julian, trying to relax with his flute and relying on his valet to write his speeches. As his wife, Lady Kitty, Nancy Carroll is like a whirlwind, a mixture of panic and passionate enthusiasm and all with great comic timing.
Phoebe Fildes as social-climbing Fanny Lacklustre makes her certainly pushy, but at first she seems to have good intentions. Her posh accent slips away as she reveals herself. Laurence Ubong Williams, however, makes her brother common and conniving (an ebullient contrast to his staid valet in the first act).
The Macphails are exaggeratedly eccentric: Matthew Woodyatt’s shy Sir Colin tongue-tied and frozen with nerves, Dillie Keane as his mother madly waving her arms as she issues orders. Rosalind Ford and George Blagden make a lively pairing as Imogen and Valentine—we know they are in love well before they do, and there is full-blooded playing from-the rest of the cast too.
Farce needs to be given a straight face, and at first what seemed a conscious playing for laughs made it less funny, though most of the audience were finding it hilarious. Perhaps it got less outrageous and character took over or it may just be that I got tuned into the style.
This isn’t Pinero’s best play, but he satirises everyone and his original audience would have recognised them from real life (except themselves of course), and maybe you will today. This a flamboyant and joyful revival.