Review: SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER, Orange Tree Theatre

And just like that the season of roaring fireplaces and woolly jumpers, an unending night is upon us. Fortunately there is a fuzzy antidote to the Winter blues with Tom Littler’s sparkling new production of She Stoops To Conquer.

Goldsmith’s 1773 comedy of errors is shrewdly transposed to Wodehouse’s 1930s; all the shenanigans, mixed letters, false identities, tricks and twists effortlessly shed stockings and garters for dinner jackets and flapper dresses. It’s a genius move, one that further cements the Orange Tree’s reputation as London’s home for revisiting lost gems of British theatre. Plays that would otherwise risk being lost in the hubbub of crowd pleasers and the buzz of new writing.

Littler’s production makes full use of the Orange Tree’s cosy intimacy. Transformed into a wooden panelled pub adorned with hunting trophies, festive fairy lights and leather armchairs, and effervescing all the warmth of one too, the tightly knit cast feel right at home duelling each other with Goldsmiths’s sabre-like text, only slightly streamlined to help conjure the setting. 

They delightfully lean into the cartoonish elements, gleefully ramping up the campy hijinks. With flourishes of cartoonish physical comedy, the dithering manservant Diggory and a rubber faced Freddie Fox’s Charles Marlow are finely tuned to hilarious perfection.

We follow the bumbling effete Marlow and debonair sidekick Hastings as they are duped into believing the country house where they shelter for the night is really a humble inn. They believe the master of the house David Horovitch’s rambunctious Mr Hardcastle really is an innkeeper and his sly but self-assured daughter Kate, who happens to be betrothed to Marlow, a lowly barmaid. Throw in some missing jewels and a secret affair, and topsy-turvydom is inevitable.

Marlow and Hastings could almost be a precursor to Withnail and I, bespectacled city boys lost in a green and pleasant land preyed upon for laughs by Hardcastle’s son, the dim-witted but loveable country lad Tony Lumpkin. The gentle prods at class dynamics and country vs city divides still packs a sting even if some of the bite is lost in the elongated plot.

With its rotating rouges gallery of characters including Hasting’s boisterous love interest Constance, and the gauche Mrs Hardcastle garishly wrapped in turquoise, and a chorus of pub patrons, the story threads tangle and cross but Littler’s directorial prowess ensures a nimble pace that makes fast work of the two and half hour runtime.

So what if we are not entirely sure how all its constituent parts are tied up in the end? With this one it is the journey that counts. And what a gorgeous one it is.

She Stoops To Conquer plays at the Orange Tree until 13 January 2024

Photo Credits: Marc Brenner

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