Colin Blumenau and his team at the recently restored Theatre Royal have been mining the archives of Georgian theatre for forgotten gems which can be polished up and enjoyed once more.

I have seen a few of these little masterpieces in rehearsed readings, and there are indeed some glittering treasures among them, but perhaps this one should have been left in obscurity.

Author Thomas Holcroft is best known today as a political activist and publisher of The Rights of Man by Tom Paine. On this evidence, he should have stuck to pamphleteering. Described as ‘outrageous satire’ the play is lacklustre and derivative, drawing on many stock characters and situations from Restoration and Georgian plays but without the animating spark of wit and accurate observation to make it funny.

The characters are little more than cardboard cut-outs depicting a particular personality trait - I’m indecisive/I’m pale and broken hearted/I’m stubborn/I’m frivolous - in a very literal way, as unsubtle as the Vices and Virtues in a mediaeval Morality Play.

The plot was built round improbable contrivances and unlikely meetings which would make the writers of The Beano blush.

The actors, for all their best efforts, were unable to breathe life into these ciphers. Everything was said, repeated and underscored until meaning had been wrung out to the dregs.

The audience clutched at any comic straws to give themselves an excuse to laugh, and most of the laughs came from the bits in between the words, such as a facial expression, gesture or bit of business from one of the actors.

In the second half, Holcroft seems to have dropped all pretensions to writing a comedy and decided to go for melodrama.

All the plot points that had been sketched in during the first half were explained in heavy-handed detail. By the time Delaval and Versatile had finished the scene where they recounted all that had happened between their two families, in punishing detail, I was losing the will to live.

The set design and staging, influenced by the waspish social and political cartoons of the day, was delightful.

Apparently, this play was tremendously popular in its day, but whatever charms it once had have not withstood the test of time.

Gayle Wade 
September 2009