Reviews : The Triumph Of Love
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As sprightly as a spring lamb, the Exchange's adaptation of Marivaux's cross-dressing screwball comedy oozes frivolity, poikes fun at the austere and, as the title suggests, celebrates the all-conquering power of passion over reason.
Telling the ever-familiar tale of girl meets boy, girl falls in love with boy, girl realises that her father usurped his father from the throne, boy is raising an army to kill girl and that to win his love she must make his custodians (male and female) fall in love with her, this frolicking farce is nothing if not complicated, but under the steady direction of Braham Murray the production makes complete sense.
Though direction is noteworthy, the real reason for the success of this show is the outstanding performance by Rae Hendrie as the scheming princess, flitting effortlessly between flouncing highpitched folly and cool, collected conniving, while managing to keep the audience on-side with an affable air that makes her duplicity endearing rather than unlikeable. Played completely for laughs, this production is light and fluffy as opposed to earth-shatteringly insightful but, as the play points out repeatedly, a life without a little frivolity is no life at all.
Metro
All is rosy in the perfumed garden of the philosopher Hermocrates. Until, that is, it is intruded upon by Leonida who brings turmoil to the cloistered calm of this botanical paradise.
Marivaux's The Triumph of Love, adapted and translated by the director Braham Murray in collaboration with Katherine Sand, with some allusive jokiness and double entendres, is a triumph of words over love.
It requires some concentrated listening to follow the complexities of a tale that involves cross-dressing, gender-bending, dissembling hearts and hollow theorising, all handsomely presented as a piece of French fluff with a steely core.
Agis, engagingly portrayed by Charlie Anson, lives in strict seclusion with Hermocrates and his spinster sister, Leontina. Books and reason rule here and passion is strictly reserved as a subject for philosophy. Enter Leonida and her servant (the latter played by Sarah Paul who proves an excellent foil).
Leonida, a reigning princess, wishes to restore the throne of Sparta to the rightful heir, Agis, with whom she has fallen in love at first sight. But since it was Leonida's parents who usurped Sparta from Agis, he has been brought up to hate Leonida and her family.
Her task is Herculean. She must contrive to win the heart of Agis without revealing her identity, and, in giving him back his crown, become his queen. Inspired by love and justice, as she puts it, she manipulates everyone in order to gain access to, and liberate, the object of her affection.
First, as a deep-voiced youth she shows merry gravity as she makes a chum of noble Agis. Then, as an earnestly stammering young man she woos the philosopher's credulous sister. Next, as a flighty, squeaky-voiced girl she melts the heart of the donnish philosopher himself.
Rae Hendrie makes a sparkling Leonida, giving a virtuoso performance in her various guises while remaining as coolly clinical as the machinations that Marivaux devises. Having had their passions aroused, the duped philosopher and his sister are condemned to end their days with love once more restricted to philosophy.
The elderly couple's emotional trouncing may be turned into a comic caper, but given the quality of the performances - an extremely well-matched Terence Wilton as a desiccated bachelor and Brigit Forsyth as a maidenly frump - their humiliation raises the question of whether a moral end really can justify immoral means?
Leonida's conscience may be clear, since she claims to have wronged no one, but despite the deliciousness of the final revelations, during which Agis goes through agonies, her deceit is double-edged.
Simon Higlett's elegant circular set, its geometric layout complementing the spatial relationships of the characters, is heavy on metaphor, not least in the tumescent topiary and blowsy tulips which add their own unidiomatically vulgar sideshow.
A couple of conniving servants help along the action, a rustic gardener, Dimas (not as dim as he seems) and a wily Scottish harlequin, energetically played by John Axon and Michael Moreland. Their enthusiasm for bribes leads them deep into the charade and, with their quick-fire patter, they provide a vivid comic strand.
The evening,is a mere couple of hours and the play might have been better presented as part of a double-bill. But Murray's production neatly navigates the twists and turns of the plot. With Leonida as the supercharged catalyst, leading all and sundry a merry dance, this Triumph of Love, a sophisticated and often cruel game from the Age of Reason, is all style over substance and frothing with intrigue.
The Independent
Love makes the world go around in this delightful adaptation of a centuries old French comedy, and puts everyone in a spin.
In the crazy cross-dressing world of Marivaux's TRIUPMH OF LOVE a princess adopts the clothes of a man, invades the aretreat of a rationalist thinker who hates love and wins the prince of her dreams.
And all that in a little under two hours!
It's not just the dizzying speed of this production that takes the breath away, but the torrent of words in a philosophical and funny treatise on love and lust, virtue and vanity.
Miss a moment of the verbal madness...and it does not really matter. for at the heart of it all is a stunning performance from actress Rae Hendrie, barely recognisable from her string of TV roles.
As the woman in man's clothing she gives a mistress and masterclass in unabashed acting skills, switching from blokey bloke to girly whirly voices and mannerisms as she woos a sister and brother simultaneously.
Study her wonderfully expressive features, put to such detailed use, and you will seldom feel the smile leave your own face.
Designer Simon Higlett even throws in his own visual gags in a production that is a springime treat from start to finish.
Lancashire Evening Post