Thursday 11th until Saturday 20th February 2010 @ Bristol Old Vic, Bristol

Pun’s have always been a favorable way of referring to situations; ‘I love you’ being the ever merry pun. In William Wycherly’s rompy restoration drama, The Country Wife, the pun and its playful uses account for the play’s erection. As we enter the romantic season of St Valentine, with love hearts spraying the window displays of shops across Bristol, The Country Wife is an accurate seasonal selection, with love, sex, lust and impotence as the main themes; the Bristol Old Vic Theatre School have the perfect material to entertain their horny mid-Feb audience.

When a cigarette hits water it sizzles and sinks, outnumbered by the blistering cold which swims around it. The fire cannot continue to burn; it is out of its league. When the Bristol Old Vic Theater School performs this lengthy comedy of manners, it is no feeble attempt. From the simple yet insightful set design, right the way through to character casting and script adjustments, the team’s firm understanding of the play reflects back into the audience, as each scene flows smooth and necessarily.

The theme of appearances, which is ever present in Wycherly’s text, is emphasised further by the set design which consists of the use of doors suspended on flies. The door is like a metaphor for the mask each of these characters are hiding behind with the Lady’s struggling to uphold their honor, Horner pretending he is a eunuch so he can lay with other men’s wives ‘honestly’ and Pinch wife literally locking up his wife, Margery, so she will not fall in love with another man. However, the doors each of these characters wish to hide behind comes head to head in the final scene as appearances are revealed in a hilarious interchange which could have been quite a complicated thing to understand as an audience member, had the ensemble not delivered it so clearly, with the appropriate emphasis on comic moments.

Sparkish’s signature skip and Jaspers smiling naivety are brilliant examples of how the actors used their own professionalism to make the characters their own. It is hard to find the star among all the playful chaos but the Brimmer scene, led by Lady Fidget and her ladies of honour, was when my belly was most ticklish - but then that makes me think about the china scene and its dramatic energy. The director uses the play’s obviousness cleverly and the tongue in cheek way it is delivered brings the theatre back to its roots in entertainment.

www.bristololdvic.org.uk

Kayleigh Cassidy