Review: The Misanthrope
[Lyttelton Theatre at the National || June 16th to August 1st || 1h 45m]
While watching, or rather enduring, Indhu Rubasingham’s production of Martin Crimp’s latest take on Molière’s The Misanthrope (or, to give it its much funnier title, the Cantankerous Lover), I found myself recalling Stewart Lee’s gag about audiences discussing his stand up: “Did you see Stewart Lee? Yeah. Was it funny? No, but I agreed the fuck out of it.” This production falls into the same mould, albeit this time entirely unironically. An excruciating display of self-congratulation and back patting that never once threatens to be controversial or interesting, instead pandering to an audience who know what’s right and won’t hear otherwise, Crimp’s adaptation of the text is a lousy, lazy affair that has nothing to say and yet still insists on saying it loudly and badly.
First performed 360 years ago, Molière’s text is a satire about the hypocrisies of the French aristocracy and the facade of manners and apparent decency to which they supposedly conformed. Alceste, the protagonist, refuses to behave as demanded of high society and is thus ostracised, highlighting how those who speak their minds could not be tolerated by those with the wealth and power. At a time when theatre was fiercely controlled and restricted, the text was a poke in the very eye of influence and authority and was thus courageous, albeit in a rather limited fashion. By contrast this version, if it’s about anything, is a tedious exercise in both cowardice and the very conformity against which the text is supposed to rail.
The titular misanthrope - in this production, Sandra Oh’s Alice - is an outspoken novelist and critic whose views cause her to face the dreaded “cancellation” from the elites of the literary and entertainment world. What those views are is anyone's guess, as Crimp makes craven allusions to Gaza and the Berlinale but is never brave enough to spell out exactly what Alice has said (other than that she thinks people need to speak out) on the issue, thus trying to have his cake and eat it, except the cake tastes like regurgitated shit. When the moment of ostracism finally arrives, it is both unearned and baffling, because not only does the text never actually engage with its ideas but Alice also never says anything shocking or controversial lest Crimp alienate a single member of the audience.
Like Molière’s original text, Crimp’s adaptation is also written in verse. The effect of this is to render it like a GCSE drama piece, albeit with none of the wit or charm. The dialogue is the worst combination of facile and smug, constantly thinking itself infinitely more intelligent than it is while stumbling around like a drunk for anything of worth to say. The uneven rhymes and staccato delivery quickly become tiresome as Crimp desperately tries to contrive meaning and profundity after driving himself into a ditch of his own making. The text thuds rather than sings, entirely devoid of rhythm, and as it drags on for what is, relatively speaking, a quite short runtime of 105 minutes, it becomes apparent that it isn’t about anything and that Crimp, far from adapting the text, has instead simply transformed it into a pious yet meaningless whine.
With little of note to work with, the performances also suffer. Sandra Oh, to her credit, is good, and her skills as a comedic actor just about see her through the vacant mire of the text. She is alone in this however. The rest of the performances are listless and, in a good few cases, actively terrible. Oh is the only one who tries to make it work but with no support from the rest of the cast (except, at a push, Tom Mison, who is passable as her partner Stefan) it is a hopeless endeavour. This is as much Rubasingham’s fault as the ensemble’s, however, as she has seemingly directed a bunch of people to behave as though they’re starring in different plays from one another, which further exacerbates the sense that this is a production that has no idea what on earth it wants to say.
I wasn’t insulted or offended by The Misanthrope, I was simply bored by it. It is a vacuous void of a production, with few redeeming features and fewer moments that even pique one’s interest. The first scene, in which Alice argues with her best friend and then criticises a budding novelist to her face is by far and away the best in the show, with everything that follows rapidly disintegrating into nothing as the ensemble flails and then fails to sell either Rubasingham’s vision or Crimp’s words. It’s a mess of a production that oozes an arrogance and self-righteousness that is wholly unearned and unbecoming, and it is the worst thing I have seen on stage so far this year. What a shame.
Tickets for The Misanthrope are available here (if you must…).