by Bernard Shaw
seen at the Orange Tree Theatre, Richmond on 14 December 2017
Paul Miller directs his third Shaw play at the ever-impressive Orange Tree Theatre (unfortunately I missed his The Philanderer though I saw Widowers' Houses in 2015). The new play fizzes with ideas and with almost absurd social situations, but the witticisms reveal unexpected truths and often surprisingly painful tensions, both between characters, and between the social roles people live by and their own (usually flattering) images they have of themselves.
In the hands of an excellent cast the now-unfashionable wordiness of Shaw is managed with great verve and dexterity; the speed of delivery is perhaps only possible in such an intimate space, but it certainly helps in preventing the play from being bogged down by its own verbiage. What lifts Shavian cleverness into something more probing is the deft revelations of depths of character beneath the surface brilliance of the dialogue. From the peculiar camp narcissism of Rhys Isaac-Jones's Bentley Summerhayes to the worldly-weariness of Simon Shepherd as his father Lord Summerhayes, from the brittle self-righteousness of Jordan Mifsúd's interloper to the bullying suavity of Luke Thallon's Joey Percival, we see people who can experience real pain, which their superficial behaviour can mask but not entirely conceal.
