Stratford Festival
Through October 10
SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER Avon Theatre/Stratford Festival
By Augustine Warner
Old-fashioned farce is becoming rarer in the theater, perhaps because it so often relies on centuries-old stereotypes, you know, rascal servants, dumb aristocrats, country bumpkins.
That’s all true and many people favor avoidance of stereotypes.
The problem is that it can also be very funny.
There’s a good and entertaining example in Stratford’s old-fashioned proscenium stage Avon Theatre, Oliver Goldsmith’s “She Stoops to Conquer.”
It fits in a Stratford season which also includes Ben Jonson’s satire “The Alchemist.”
Goldsmith’s play is a shot at Britain’s “rustics,” the aristocrats and nobles who live in the country and don’t visit London for the economic and class warfare.
It’s also a shot at a perennial British stage topic, fortune hunting by the impoverished upper crust.
Here, it’s set in a fancy country home perhaps 40-miles from the London of 1768, owned by a rich and lost-in-the-past Mr. Hardcastle (Joseph Ziegler) and his wife Mrs. Hardcastle (Lucy Peacock), and run by a herd of servants who aren’t kept in service shape.
Mrs. Hardcastle has an idiot son, Tony Lumpkin (Karack Osborn), who will eventually inherit money but is into country pursuits of horses, drinking and female servants.
There’s a daughter Kate (Maev Beaty), who’s also rich, and a cousin, Constance Neville (Sara Farb), who has assets and a boyfriend lined up.
The Hardcastles want to marry everyone off, including Tony to Constance, neither of whom has the other in mind.
Kate wants out but can’t line someone up.
Then the son of Hardcastle’s old friend Sir Charles Marlow (Nigel Bennett) arranges for his son Young Charles (Brad Hodder) to come for a visit and he brings along Constance’s dream, George Hastings (Tyrone Savage).
That’s it, idiot parents, single young people and ambitions beyond a lavish country house.
The situation never mentioned is that the British Upper Crust wasn’t supposed to work and earn a living and owning vast farms wasn’t included in that prohibition.
The money was supposed to appear in thin air or be married into and that’s why so many plays revolved around seeking rich heiresses.
The same heiresses were limited in their ability to hunt guys and poor women could be ignored and Jane Austen had fun with that and their hopes for a rich heir.
Director Martha Henry is an old hand at these plays and has lavish design help from Douglas Paraschuk for the set and Charlotte Dean for the costumes.
They play on three interlinked revolving tables, moving the morning room, the Three Pigeons pub and the bottom of the garden.
The cast members also speak to the audience.
These are all nice people, just confused and unaware and many are tricked by Tony and his buddies in the Three Pigeons who tell Young Charles and Hastings that the giant building just down the road is a pub and the two arrive and treat Hardcastle and his family as the innkeeper and the servants.
This whole show is way too complicated to explain and there isn’t any real need to, instead just sit back and roll with the events.
You can see what a figure Goldsmith became with “She Stoops” and what he might have been if he hadn’t died way too young.
This is entertainment, way past somewhat similar and earlier Restoration comedies and putting up with the rigid censorship of the stage and surrounding social change.
Besides Henry’s usual fine direction, she’s working with a strong cast, Peacock, Ziegler, Osborn, Farb, Beaty and Hodder.
For local audiences, there’s also a name to catch your eye and ear, Daniel Briere as one of the servants.
Henry also has the usual strong crew for the minor roles in a show which heavily relies on well-rehearsed appearances and disappearances and farcical arrivals and departures.
“She Stoops to Conquer” is one of Britain’s seminal sex farces and a strong addition to the Stratford season and worth seeing.
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