Drama

Costumes were Brilliant

The Recruiting Officer by George Farquhar Downstage Theatre

What place has The Recruiting Officer on the Wellington stage in 1979? Hopefully I wasn't alone in asking that questions after [unclear: iceing] its production at Downstage, because if this is the sort of theatre that belongs and is accepted by theatregoers and theatre makers then I must concede my interest in theatre as being misplaced and resign without further complaint my allegiances to those seductive relatives, armchair tele and popcorn cinema.

The Recruiting Officer was first performed in 1706 which is no reason to bar it from the stage today. It is generally considered to be one of the chief achievements of the theatre of its time. Now if we are effectively to maintain the stage alongside the more recently developed dramatic mediums, we must be prepared to be fully eclectic, exploring all facets of theatre in its past and present forms, in an attempt to produce something that is living and viable today. Similarly, having chosen to do a Restoration Comedy the responsibility must be to transplant its native vitality and relevance into something that makes sense in 1979. Such a production would then deserve to stand as something that is richly and uniquely Theatre; a competitive alternative to Pennies From Heaven and Mlddle Age Spread.

By 1706 the immediate Restoration period of Theatre, witty, dissolute comedies written and performed for an idle and easygoing aristocracy, was giving way, as was the social order, to a bourgeois taste for more responsibility. Thus amongst the elegant wit of the gentle-characters, Farquhar wove a comment on the coarser reality of an iniquitous army recruting system. The Downstage production weakened the recruiting plot and left us instead with two rather silly romantic plots. The play when written was rich in wit and innuendo-but most, I suspect, is lost on the majority of us, because the majority of actors and audience are no longer proficient in recognising this verbal style-and was stocked with a colourful range of characters.

A large part of the failure of this production, I feel, was in the failure to allow these characters to establish themselves. Their names provide indication of their variety—Worthy, Brazen, Plume (the gallant). Kite (bird of prey?) This last provided the most revealing instance of this failure. Kite should be the villain, a bully, dishonest, 'theiving, pimping, canting, lying', instead he was played mild mannered, quiet voiced and smooth in appearance.

The two principle ladies, too, threw away a wonderful chance to establish their characters in their acerbic first shared dialogue.

Yet John Banas is a comicly foppish Brazen; John McDavitt a touchingly cloddish Bullock and David McKenzie a tolerable Balance.

The question must be asked how much was the failure that of the directors in failing to discover the weight and potential of the comedy, rather than to heap blame on the actors? They seemed to have been unwilling to explore and make use of the texture of the play, which failure was unfortunately borne out by the design (Codirector and designer are one).

The cheif acheivements of the set and the lighting was in highlighting the costumes, which were excellent. Otherwise it contributed little, except to provide a selection of entrances and slight differentiation of levels. It's blandness was its most striking quality, unrelieved by the colourless slides that denoted the changes of scene; it certainly contributed nothing to the flavour of the period in an English market town.

Very disappointing Theatre.

John Godfrey.