Ring Round The Moon, Playhouse, London
Thursday 21 February 2008
Related articles
Watching Anouilh's Ring Round the Moon is like consuming a light soufflé in which someone has secreted bits of razor blade. Both its gossamer texture and its astringency are honoured in the barbed elegance of Sean Mathias's entertaining revival at the Playhouse.
He uses the 1950 adaptation by Christopher Fry, subtitled "a charade with music". The setting is the winter garden of a French country house where a ball is about to commence. The production shifts the action from the belle époque to the period of the comedy's 1947 premiere, the New Look Dior gowns reeking of demobbed glamour.
Like some playboy version of Prospero, the cynical Hugo is determined to stage-manage this event and has hired Isabelle, a beautiful, impoverished ballet dancer, in the hope that she will dazzle his twin Frederic and save him from a potentially calamitous marriage to the daughter of a Jewish millionaire. The plan works – up to a point. The twist is that, when she's humiliated by the toffs because of her low rank and by the rich because of her poverty, the girl who's being paid to be a fraud refuses to be bought off, her stand exposing the superficial values of her alleged betters.
"I love it when the lamb turns round and eats up the high priest," declares the elderly chatelaine whose fluting aristocratic imperiousness and spurts of subversive wisdom are drolly conveyed by Angela Thorne. She tosses spanners into her calculating nephew's works, as when (to spite him) she calmly pretends that Isabelle's mother – a vulgar embarrassment (Belinda Lang) whom Hugo has been struggling to hide – is an old chum whom she kits out as a countess.
There's a bizarre scene in which Isabelle (deftly portrayed by Fiona Button) and Leigh Lawson's depressive millionaire demonstrate their immunity to the charms of money by boisterously shredding bundles of banknotes. As a radical gesture, this has its limits; it's not the most positive redistribution of wealth.
In a striking West End debut, the fetching JJ Feild adroitly differentiates the sensitive, melancholy Frederic and the fascinatingly heartless Hugo. Driven to a frenzy of superiority, the latter imagines he has seen through the pretences of his guests, but the play sees much further than he does.
To 24 May (0870 060 6631)
Arts & Ents blogs
Brighton Fringe 2013 – Is everyone sitting uncomfortably?
Fancy seeing a play about serial killers? How about inviting a funeral director into your home for a...
The Fall ‘Darkness Visible’ – Series 1, episode 2
There are a good many moments in the second episode of this psychological thriller that deserve refl...
‘Vicious’ – Series 1, episode 4
The opening titles squeal ‘Never Can Say Goodbye…’. Oh Lord how I wish I could heave this series off...
Travel Shop
-
Coronation Street triumphs over EastEnders at British Soap Awards 2013
-
The Hangover III star Heather Graham: I'll miss playing a sexy stripper because my real life is pretty boring
-
Hollywood practices random acts of red-carpet kindness
-
Archaeologists uncover nearly 5,000 cave paintings in Burgos, Mexico
-
Cannes Film Festival 2013: And why exactly are vous here?
- 1 Man and woman arrested on suspicion of conspiracy to murder victim of Woolwich machete attack, named as Drummer Lee Rigby
- 2 'Sickening, deluded and unforgivable': Horrific attack brings terror to London’s streets
- 3 Grace Dent: I’m not sure how these people can avoid being called ‘bigots’. And the more ‘civilised’, the worse they are
- 4 Woolwich murder: They killed, then they performed - these men should be starved of our attention
- 5 Woolwich attack: The EDL will seek to exploit this evil crime for their own evil ends
Get your summer started with British Military Fitness
BMF is the UK’s biggest and best loved outdoor fitness classes
Visit York
Find out what The Independent's resident travel expert has to say about one of the most beautiful small cities in the world
Making reading fun for kids
Nook is donating eReaders to volunteers at high-need schools and participating in exclusive events throughout the campaign.
Introducing the 'Get Reading' campaign
Get the latest on The Evening Standard's campaign to get London's children reading.
Enter the latest Independent competitions
Win anything from gadgets to five-star holidays on our competitions and offers page.
Business videos from commercial thought leaders
Watch the best in the business world give their insights into the world of business.
Edward VIII’s phone calls - and how MI5 bugged them
Hollywood's random acts of red-carpet kindness
Not secure any more: G4S boss heads for exit at last
How to say ‘I’m a sellout’





Comments