Royal Lyceum Theatre, Edinburgh
4 stars
Love, sex and money are all the rage in D.C. Jackson's ribald
twenty-first century re-telling of Beaumarchais' eighteenth century
romp. In Jackson's world, Figaro is a thrusting young banker in
partnership with his equally on the make squeeze, Suzanne. Together
they're about to merge with a top-floor firm that will make them the
biggest financial institution in Scotland. To get there, the young
lovers must negotiate their way around a series of increasingly
compromising positions involving an even more lascivious power couple,
predatory PA Margery, a cross-dressing Ukrainian office boy-toy and an
overdose of Glass Ceiling perfume by Jackie Collins.
Thatcher's children are alive and kicking in Mark Thomson's production,
which, while peppered throughout with a series of trademark spiky
one-liners by Jackson, also shows off a new-found maturity from a
writer who seems to have moved on from adolescent fumbling. If the
tub-thumping anti-capitalist polemic at the end states the obvious, it
nevertheless feels very much of the moment.
In the main, Jackson's script allows Thomson's cast to explore the
full grotesquerie of how money talks. While Mark Prendergast and Nicola
Roy make a handsome couple, Molly Innes' Margery and Jamie Quinn's
Pavlo provide much of the play's comic drive. It's Stuart Bowman's
explosive Sir Randy, however, who provides the play's amoral compass,
his mixture of self-important pomp and unintentional ridiculousness
falling somewhere between Fred Goodwin and Charles Endall Esquire,
bankrupt on every level in a comedy of considerable power.
The Herald, March 26th 2012
ends
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