Theatre
Military manoeuvres
Christopher Edwards
This is a fresh and very funny revival of George Farquhar's comedy (written in 1706). Farquhar remains one of our most engaging playwrights. His wit is free of the riddling self-regard of predecessors like Wycherley, Etherege and Vanbrugh. Where they are harsh and antithetical, he is genial. It is this geniality (along with a significant shift out of London to country settings) that marks his departure from the more brittle, metropolitan orthodoxies of Restoration comedy. And, for me, he is more amusing. The sharp barking laughter of, say, Etherege is replaced by a humour that is both more subtle and more con- siderate. Max Stafford-Clark and his com- pany catch these tones beautifully. The play arose directly out of Farquhar's own army experience. Captain Plume (David Haig) arrives in Shrewsbury as the recruiting officer of the title. No sooner has he exchanged greetings with the earthy Sergeant Kite (Jim Broadbent) than he learns that the girl he seduced the previous year has had a baby. . . . 'Kite, you must father the child.' On the face of it the stock, callous retort of a Restoration rake. In fact there is a humane innocence about Plume that dispels any image of the liber- tine while leaving, ideally, just a whiff of casual morality about him. In Plume, as in the play, warfare and love are intertwined with considerable skill — the imagery of wooing and recruitment overlap constant- ly. But because Plume is not just amoral, there is always a problem of balance for the actor. I thought David Haig carried it off with charm and intelligence; he retains that necessary touch of bluff soldier's realism about sex, but combines it with an innate decency that ultimately prevails. Even if you do sense, early on, that he is obviously good at heart, his openness and intelli- gence make him so much more interesting than the legion of Restoration stereotypes with their stock responses.
Plume is after Silvia (Lesley Sharp). Silvia returns his affection. Silvia's father Balance admires him too, but Balance has higher ambitions for his estate. It is social form versus the heart, and thus the tradi- tional comedy of intrigue gets under way. Silvia's relations with her father are marked by a refreshing, adult candour, but she respects his wishes. So, denied the husband she wants, Silvia dons breeches and tricks her way into Plume's world disguised as a recruit. And it is as friends that the justice of their alliance becomes even more apparent. Amid conventional twists and comic misunderstandings (which are very funny), the military world of frank male camaraderie is revealed, in certain respects, as more authentic than the post- urings of traditional courtship. In fact, what makes Farquhar's girl-in-trousers de- vice almost Shakespearean is the way in which physical comedy is used to create a more humane grasp of physicality in both Silvia and Plume.
Jim Broadbent's Seargeant Kite is a superb representative of the unsentimental side of recruiting. He is a huge greasy yob, but resourceful and shrewd with it. Through him we see all the traditional chicanery used by Her Majesty's Armed Forces to get their hands on unwilling conscripts. He also plays a crucial and cripplingly funny role as fortune-teller to help resolve the play's sub-plot between Melinda (Linda Bassett) and Worthy (Nick Dunning). As a contrast to the balanced maturity of Plume and Silvia, Linda Bas- set's peevish pseudo-sophistication is both pointed and very funny. And then, several degrees below her in absurd pretension, we have Ron Cook's gloriously affected Cap- tain Brazen.
As for the doubling up of characters (which some people seem to object to; have they never enjoyed Cheek by Jowl or Shared Experience?), I thought this just demonstrated the company's virtuosity. The only disappointment was the lacklus- tre set. For the rest, the production is strongly recommended.
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