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Money talks in Watergate play
MONEY, lack of money, recession and depression are the talk of the times, so it seems only appropriate that a touring adaptation of Molière's comedy The Miser is coming to the Watergate Theatre on June 21 and 22.
As explained in a review in The Stage magazine: “Talk about perfect timing. While stinginess and absurd belt-tightening are the enduring central themes of this darkly comic satire, there is no evidence of frugality about the handsome, high-energy production, in which Diana Ennis’ flamboyant costumes whirl and sparkle against Neil Martin’s courtly harpsichord score and Stewart Marshall’s sombrely lush circular set.”
“Johnston and director Dan Gordon have applied the same degree of fearless panache as they did to their 2007 adaptation of Le Malade Imaginaire into The Hypochondriact, in which Gray also played the central character,” it continues, while the British Theatre Guide wrote: “The plot should be familiar enough. A miser, who is comically cruel to his servants while hoarding his cash obsessively and frustrating his children’s marriage prospects, plans to satisfy his own absurd desires, a prospect which evaporates when the sovereigns go missing. As catch-up, YouTube offers Luis de Funs 1980 version as prep.
“In this adaptation Molire’s Harpagon becomes Johnston’s Harpington, an avariciously penny-pinching Scots merchant, transposed, as many were, from Edinburgh to Ulster at the beginning of the 18th century. His son Clante, has become a popinjay of a flneur, a Tristram (Richard Clements) who would, like his grumpy father, marry the seemingly penniless Marianne (an acting by numbers Sarah Lyle) who, for little reason, has lost an ‘n’ from her forename. Julie Maxwell, uninspiring as Harpington’s daughter Eloise, was once Harpagon’s offspring Elise. Paul Boyd plays, tediously, the tediously handsome Alexander, her beau, Molire’s Valre. Richard Orr enjoys, as much as does the audience, his joint roles as pantomime villains, part Three Musketeers, part James Bond.”
‘The Miser’ is in the Watergate on June 21 and 22 at 8pm. Tickets are f18/f15 on 056 7761674.
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Tuesday 07 February 2012
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