Monkey's Uncle

The Arts Club’s first production of 2013 was the pseudo French farce Monkey’s Uncle.  I say pseudo as I don’t think it was written by a Frenchman (David Lewis) and the third act takes place in a contemporary English setting.  This was an interesting and unexpected twist contrasting the attitudes to sex and infidelity in our own era with those of the early 20th Century.

The first two acts are an homage to French playwright Georges Feydeau and as with typical French farce takes place first in Georges’ home and then in an hotel suite, where the usual farcical comings and goings and falling down of trousers takes place.  Who is meeting whom?  Will they be discovered hiding in the wardrobe? How will it all end?

This was a clever piece of theatre well directed by Geoff Baron which produced many ridiculous and humorous moments.  The sets were well designed and nicely reflected the period, as were the costumes (with specially weighted trousers for maximum falling down effect!)

Steve Cooke played Georges Feydeau and a very good interpretation it was.  His wife, Marianne was also very well portrayed by Rachel Nolan.  The other couple in the hapless enterprise Alphonse and Cecile Habillot were played by Tony Lewis and Andrea Crawley respectively and were both well played.  Feydeau’s friend and fellow philanderer Bendoit Didier was delivered very believably by David Pilkington and the part of Feydeau’s young prodigy was brought to life by Tom Haworth.  The final piece of the love heptagon was Charlotte McConnell in the role of Yvette the maid.  All played well against each other with some lovely comedy moments.

The final scene sees the players converting to their modern day equivalents giving the audience an all too telling and vulgar version of what the original French playwrights achieved with tongue in cheek scripting and innuendo; a very nice close to this production.

It’s a shame that the play was poorly attended on the night I visited as it was a pleasure to watch.  Well done to all the cast and production team for an enjoyable evening.

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