THE MARQUISE AT THE ARTS THEATRE
Albie Marber & Eva O'Hara
Noel Coward is surely the quintessence of a type of Englishness. His humour is ironic; his comedy is oblique – a sense of native absurdity twists his lines into laughs. So why did he choose Europe, for this semi-farce.? He simply does not really know the terrain. Off his home pitch, he guesses at the mores of Spain and feels all at sea with the aristocracy of France. The best we get is a parody of a Brit’s take on Johnny Foreigner.
Juliet Aubrey at the Marquise
Eva O’Hara and Simon Shepherd
In a modernist chateau deep in en pleine campagne ,resides the Lord of the Manor Raoul de Vriaac , Simon Shepherd, a widower with his 18 year old daughter Adrienne. Since his wife’s death two years before he has taken to religion ( presumably Catholicism) and has a resident member of the senior clergy Monsignor there a gloomy Father Clement ,a dour Martin Carroll with very little to say for himself. Raoul embraces austerity and a sinless life. His daughter believes her mother is the chilly pious person whose portrait hangs on the wall- and she remembers with cool revulsion.
Suddenly in breezes the glamorous Eloise. She claims to be the Marquise of somewhere obscure, de Kestourel ( but what it means to us is very little) and has broken down outside the Chateau in her car- with maid- Alice ( Holly Smith is a comedic servant with a speciality in stair clatter). Juliet Aubrey makes a delightful dominatrix as she demands gallantry and shelter. In fact she is the real mother and the ex -partner of the once beloved Raoul, and has come to settle down with him again. Hubert the ‘major domo’ as he is described is played straight and ironic by Lee Peck – although he looks far too young to have remembered La Marquise when she was together with his master fifteen years ago.
The first act was slow as Raoul orders Elouise out and she defies him, over again. It was a circular dialogue “leave, I refuse, well then I’ll. . do what?’
Even actors of the calibre of these strained to keep up the humour. But when Act Two arrived it intensified very satisfactorily with Tristan Gemmill as Esteban el Duco to whose son Adrienne is engaged. The two aristocrats are old friends and military comrades and marrying off your children to one another is apparently what they do over there . Or so Coward would have us believe.
A wonderful scrap between the men egged on by the gloriously vampy Eloise is the highlight of the entire play. They try to be beyond violence but soon degenerate into a real duel. Meanwhile Juliet Aubrey glitters as a femme fatale à l’extraordinaire , she carries the comedy with panache and élan and a collection of other continental tricks.
Delight of the Night was our gorgeous heroine playing the piano with Raoul and the entire cast in one of Noel Coward’s best known songs, featuring ‘ Since my life began, all I ever had was a talent to amuse”
The audience exploded into heartfelt joy .
