NT LIVE - LONDON ASSURANCE
LONDON ASSURANCE by Dion Boucicault; NT Live in cinemas (Chauvel, Cremorne Orpheum in Sydney) 1pm, July 24-25, 2010
Nicholas Hytner, director of the NT and this production of London Assurance, said, in the pre-show interview, that the play is about laughter and entertainment and has virtually nothing important to say about the human condition. It’s an honest, if tongue-in-cheek description and an excellent recommendation for a couple of hours of high class, low comedy.
It’s the third globally transmitted production from the NT’s South Bank home, after Phedre (starring Helen Mirren) and Alan Bennett’s The Habit of Art, ostensibly starring Richard Griffiths but actually brilliantly stolen by Frances de la Tour. As live theatre-in cinema, the first was the least successful (although a huge hit – thanks Dame Helen) and The Habit of Art was simply scintillating. The camerawork was close to imperceptible and, with the rambling cast and visually rich, higgledy-piggledy set, it was so absorbing and at home in the Chauvel that coughs from the NT audience blended with the local coughers in the cinema stalls: spooky.
London Assurance, written by the 21-year-old Irishman Dion de Boucicault in 1841, was a great success, at Covent Garden. It was staged successfully in New York the following year and has been revived now and again, all over the English-laughing world ever since. When the play was first staged – at the beginning of Queen Victoria’s reign – it poked satirical fun at the excesses of the immediate previous monarchs (the Georges) and the Prince Regent, also a George, but who could easily be seen in Sir Harcourt Courtly (Simon Russell Beale).
Sir Harcourt is an ageing popinjay; a perfect non pareil in his own lunchtime. The terms of a will require him to marry 18-year-old Grace Harkaway (Michelle Terry) or forfeit a sizeable income. He bats not one heavily mascara-ed eyelid but sets off to the country (shudder) and Oak Hall, Gloucestershire, the ancestral Harkaway home, to do the business. Grace doesn’t bat an un-made up country girl eyelid at the prospect of her impending nuptials; she is scornful of the idea of love and knows only too well that the reason for marriage is business.
By gloriously complicated plot twists that can’t possibly be explained here, Sir Harcourt’s rapscallion, debt-laden son Charles (Paul Ready) becomes enamoured of his “new mother” (to be). At the same time, Sir Harcourt gets the flutters for Lady Gay Spanker (Fiona Shaw) a well-named local thigh-slappin’ huntress. She and her dotty hubby Mr Spanker (Richard Briers) are neighbours of the Harkaways and through them the plot continues to thicken to absurd and hilarious effect.
Hytner’s cast treat their characters with utmost seriousness so each is truthful and funny – and therefore credible and even funnier. From Cool, Sir Charles’s valet (Nick Sampson) to grubby lawyer Mr Meddle (Tony Jaywardena), the actors bring conviction and sparkle to their roles. But it has to be said that Simon Russell Beale and Fiona Shaw are – rightly – the star turns. She is as heartily masculine, with her cigars and guffaws as he is mincingly prissy (eeek, a rat!) and they make a perfect pair. They are only as good as permitted by the rest of the cast, however, and that cast is uniformly terrific. It’s a master class in comedy.
A cartoon-style set – the interior and exterior of Oak Hall on a revolve – by Mark Thompson, is simultaneously economical and visually rich; his costumes are deliriously over the top. Incidental music (fiddle, double bass and tuba) by Rachel Portman is as integral in the scene- and time-setting as the visual elements and helps to propel the action after an over- leisurely opening ten minutes.
The production opened in London in March and has been a sell-out hit ever since. The final performance – filmed for the worldwide audience – is on July 25 and the chance should be grabbed to see Fiona Shaw and Simon Russell Beale (pictured here) in two of the best comedy roles ever written. And keep an eye out for the next NT Live production in the second season.
