BWW Reviews: THE GREEN BAY TREE, Jermyn Street Theatre, November 28 2014

Mr Dulcimer lives for beautiful things, none more beautiful than Mr Julian, a boy he adopted and has cultivated as a companion and decoration. Dulcie fears loneliness and he fears the outside world with its noise, its smells, its uncontrollable humanity. While this odd couple drink cocktails (served by the unobtrusive Trump) and visit the opera, all is well, but when Mr Julian sets his cap at career girl Leonora and re-connects with the father who "sold" him, Dulcie's self-contained life is threatened - and he fights back.

Tim Luscombe's adaptation of Mordaunt Shairp's The Green Bay Tree (at the Jermyn Street Theatre until 21 December) revives a play that shocked audiences in 1933, but, 80 years on, audiences are more likely to be infuriated than shocked. Quite why smart, beautiful vet Leonora (played with bright-eyed intensity by the striking Poppy Drayton) clings to the enfeebled Julian (an equally striking, but empty-headed Christopher Leveaux) is incomprehensible. While one can imagine a brief infatuation, Leonora's commitment to such a loser is hard to credit - even for its time. She deserves more - anyone would!

Uncomfortable rather than infuriating is Richard Stirling's high camp Dulcimer. The prancing, preening, pathetic older man bought his pet (not for no reason is Julian attracted to a woman who looks after spoilt animals) when he was just 11 and, though sleeping arrangements are clearly separate, there's a predatory dimension to Dulcie that one can't help projecting back to its genesis - and uncomfortable stereotypes of gay men and young boys. Dulcie may be an egotistical monster, but, in 2014, he appears to be more than that.

Whilst the final scene is clever, it's also just a touch too glib to convince and, for all that this production delights the eye, the plot lacks conviction. One never really believes that these people would stay in each other's company for so long - they'd surely think better of it or they'd find an escape route. The course of true love never did run smooth - but maybe it didn't run quite as rough as this!

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