Tom Stoppard’s comedy of infidelity among the chattering classes comes across as a poshie rom-com with echoes of Noel Coward and a smattering of Pinter.
Inspired by his own adulterous affair, it is both an expiation of guilt and an attempt to rationalise the irrational, ie the manner in which the heart (or another organ) overrides the brain. When passion trumps reason the consequences are invariably dire.
The principal quartet comprises playwright Henry (James McArdle) and his wife Charlotte (Susan Wokoma), actress Annie (Bel Powley) and her husband Max (Oliver Johnstone).
Henry’s affair with Annie is the flame that lights the blue touch paper and soon fireworks are popping between the four as Henry twists himself in oratorical paroxysms of guilt while Max collapses in an agony of betrayal. Charlotte gets tough and Annie simply deals with everything by having a fling with a charismatic young actor Billy (Rilwan Abiola Owokoniran). It gets messy and meta-complicated and director Max Webster maintains the momentum on the minimalist set with the aid of an amusingly agile stage crew.
As the playwright, Henry gets all the plumb lines – including a celebrated analogy between writing and cricket bat construction – and McArdle almost creates empathy for his insufferably smug character.
Stoppard depicts the women as the pragmatic predators and men as their willing victims. But as the wit begins to curdle and consequences take their toll, few of the characters elicit any sympathy; the rarified milieu and lack of any real emotional chemistry in the writing – or in the performances – exposes Stoppard’s intellectual complacency.
Harold Pinter covered much the same ground with far greater impact in Betrayal. The use of popular music is designed to show Henry’s hypocritical snobbery – he agonises over his choices for Desert Island Discs – though Stoppard employed pop music far more effectively in his later play, Rock and Roll.
There is nothing here that speaks to anyone outside of the middle class, narcissistic boors within its bandwidth. It is hoist – as one character puts it – by its own petard. Boom.
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