London Assurance

I knew the title of Dion Boucicault’s “London Assurance”, but nothing else about it.  I had no idea what to expect.  What I got was 19th century comedy in the manner of Oscar Wilde - though, written in 1841, predating Wilde by a good number of years.  Something of the style of the piece can be gathered from the naming of the characters.  There’s Sir Harcourt Courtly (an excellent debut from David Woods), a faded Regency fop (in the manner of Mr Turveydrop in Dickens’ Bleak House) whose contribution to society is to pose, run-up debts and appear in the gossip columns of the day.  Then there’s the fox-hunting Squire Harkaway (Christopher Fadd).  The heroine, the squire’s niece, is called Grace and her maid is Pert.  The best name belongs to the squire’s neighbour, the boisterous Lady Gay Spanker.  (Whilst Gay has changed its meaning considerably since the piece was written, Spanker certainly hasn’t.)  The role was played with appropriately larger-than-life enthusiasm by Laraine Dunleavy.

Clive Rigden’s staging was interesting.  Essentially a box set formed by black drapes (although the back curtain was opened for a backdrop of the outside of Harkaway Hall), with the different interior sets created setting door and window frames (hung from scaff bars) in front of the curtains.  This was very effective, except for the minor incident where the Squire’s man James (Matt Allum) led out the hapless Adophus Spanker (played with doddery relish by Martin Pitman) and they couldn’t find the gap in the curtain.  To their great credit, they carried this off without wrecking the show.

Chris March was Cool.  No, I mean he played Cool.  No.  This is very difficult to phrase properly.  Cool, Sir Harcourt’s valet, was played by Chris March.  His job was that of diplomat, trying to keep his position between his vain employer and his employer’s dissolute son, Charles (Adam Jessop), who, amongst minor problems of drunkenness and debt, is being preyed-upon by gentleman scrounger Dazzle (John James).  Charles becomes a reformed character when he meets Grace (Courtney Fereday), his father’s bride-to-be and tries to engineer his own romance.  On the way, there’s a lot of fun from the Wildean epigrams and physical comedy, notably from PJ Stephens, playing the money-grubbing lawyer, Meddle.

Sometimes, it’s difficult to know which contributions have been made by a director.  In this case, the show ended with a directorial flourish.  The final speech of the play has Sir Harcourt waxing lyrical on the meaning of being a gentleman.  Originally, this would have been at least half-serious, but today it is totally facetious, emphasised by a spotlight on the up-stage Cool, deeply affected by his employer’s eloquence and shedding an emotional tear.

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