Writer: Oliver Goldsmith
Directors: Tom Littler and Francesca Ellis
Tom Littler’s She Stoops to Conquer is a joyous Christmas show devised for the Orange Tree. The intimate space is transformed into Mr Hardcastle’s hall with holly-decked wood panelling and a Christmas tree in the cosy drawing room where most of the action takes place. There’s an inviting drinks trolley with a bowl of punch and cocktail glasses and a shaky old retainer (Richard Derrington) waiting to serve. It could almost be a country inn.
And that, of course, is the point. Mischievous Tony Lumpkin, carousing in the local dive, manages to persuade naïve Londoners Charles Marlow and George Hastings that they’ll find a warm welcome at the superior local inn, The Stag, giving them directions to his step-father Hardcastle’s home.
Hardcastle is a decent, old-fashioned country gent appalled by these entitled young blades who turn up and start ordering him around. He’s been expecting Charles Marlow, son of his oldest friend, who both hope will make a match with Hardcastle’s only daughter, Kate. But he is stunned when Marlow (Freddie Fox with perfect comic timing) blanks him while casually dumps his shoes and camel overcoat into his arms, assuming he is the landlord. It is at this point that the play really takes off. Fox beguiles as the seemingly prim young man rendered speechless by pretty young ladies, while revealing his inner lounge lizard with girls of another class. We know, but he doesn’t, that the saucy maid at Hardcastle’s is in fact the very Kate Hardcastle his father wants him to meet. Tanya Reynolds puts in a fabulous turn here. if you’ve never thought light dusting could be sexy, think again: Reynolds’ energetic duster-thrusting into the horn of the wind-up gramophone is a show-stopper.
In fact all these scenes between Marlow and Kate are given marvellously inventive comedy by Fox and Reynolds. Oliver Goldsmith’s eighteenth-century classic sparkles anew with the classy acting and pacy, vibrant direction by Littler. Resetting the play in the 1930s works well. It only takes a light sprinkling of tinkety tonks and what hos to take us to the world of Wodehouse. Indeed Robert Mountford, as George Hastings, has something of Hugh Laurie about him – a very funny performance.
Like Jane Austen’s Mr and Mrs Bennet, Mr and Mrs Hardcastle are an ill-assorted pair, he grumpily pining for his comfy armchair, she in over-the-top cocktail gear desperate to get the party started. David Horovitch is a class act as Hardcastle, a master of containment: his slightest change of expression says it all. Greta Scacchi is tremendous as Mrs Hardcastle, foolish, well-meaning, always on the go. The scene in which she falls for Hastings’ blandishments is hilarious.
There is a tendency in this production, however, for slightly overdoing it. This is particularly so in an early scene where a cast of locals give their all in a rousing song and dance routine led by Guy Hughes as ukulele-playing Tony Lumpkin. But the programme reveals these are real Richmond locals, brought together by Community Director Francesca Ellis, so we can forgive them for making the most of the scene.
A little nudge of the original turns its wintry night into Christmas Eve which gives added zest to the production. Final scenes in a frozen garden as snow begins to fall round off the show with real Christmas spirit.
Runs until 13 January 2024.
