When one thinks of Restoration Comedy, names like Congreave, Wycherley, and Farquhar spring first to mind. Male playwrights in a male dominated society. What was very surprising about this particular Restoration comedy was that it was written by an (overlooked) female playwright with strong women characters with a hugely pro-feminist narrative. [at least two hundred years before anyone even thought of 'Feminism']
Mary Pix's 'The Beau Defeated' tells the story of society ladies, unmarried and unchaperoned, enjoying their lives and courters, until they do finally find their respective Mr Rights, in the seemingly most unlikely of happenstances. The male roles are shown in the main to be either frauds, fops or weaklings, and it is the women who take charge of the proceedings and finally take themselves husbands. Pix may have been daring and before her time when it came to the roles of women in her plays, but in all other aspects, the play remained true to the form, eg: using the surnames of characters to describe their attributes.. Rich, Fidget, Trickwell; a comedy of manners which pokes fun at manners; artifical and stylised sexual behaviour; and most importantly stock characters {caricatures} being placed in stock situations, such as missed communication and deceit. The play also acknowledges the audience and each scene ends with a short soliloquy or aside; again, in keeping with the style of playwriting at the time.
A rather bare and minimalist set design (Frankie Gerrard) was used for this play. A striking and opulent-looking false prosc. arch had been erected over the playing area (a very neat idea), and within that a chaise-longue, a modesty screen, a mirror, and little else. Each scene was signified by the location of it being written on a notice board SR in front of the 'proscenium', again, acknowledging that they are players in a play and we are an audience. A surprisingly simple but very effective idea. The lighting design (Aaron Dootson) mirrored this idea well and the scene changes (done by the cast) were swift and made a virtue of.
I have to admit that it took me a while at the beginning of the play to ease into it, there was something niggling me, jarring with me, and I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I realised that I was unable to 'set' this production in any particular period of time. I was hearing the language of the early 1700s, and watching characters that befitted that time, and yet the music and the costumes were firmly fixed in the New Romantic movement of popular culture of the late 1970s and early 1980s. Once I had understood the reasoning behind this, and finding that the idea worked superbly, the whole became far more enjoyable. I think it was the harpsichord music at the start which threw me. It should have been David Bowie or Duran Duran.
A large cast (16 in all) working extremely well together made this a fast-moving and entertaining two hours. All 16 of these third year acting students from the Manchester School Of Theatre made the most of their roles, right down to the small cameos. It would be remiss of me though not to single out the brilliance of a few of them. Bella McKenty's outrageous Mrs Rich was a joy, as was Keiran Michael's delighftully over-the-top Roverhead. I enjoyed Andrew Dawson's Clerimont Snr greatly, as well as many other well-rounded and nicely thought-out characters, all having just the right amount of monodimensionality without them becoming true caricatures. There was always something real and relatable in each grounding them nicely and each showed a lovely understanding of the style and genre, working superbly under the imaginative direction of Fiona Buffini. Buffini's master-stroke however were the two dogs. (no spoilers!).
Restoration theatre is not really my thing, I usually find I fidget, become bored and restless or even fall asleep during them. I can happily say that none of that was true this afternoon. Light, bright and ebullient performances abounded keeping me engaged and amused right up until the (second directorial master-stroke) dance finale!
Reviewer - Matthew Dougall
on - 7/2/20
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