Fortune’s Fool
Old Vic Theatre
February 8
2 Stars
In the programme for the Old Vic’s production of Turgenev’s Fortune’s Fool, adapted by Mike Poulton, it is stated that:
“People ask me why Fortune’s Fool is only now coming to London’s West End, after 163 years. It has been proposed many times. I suppose the answer is that I’d always resisted a London production because I wasn’t ready…The reason why Fortune’s Fool is happening now is that I believe I’ve found the perfect director, designer and cast. And it’s in The Old Vic – the perfect theatre for the play. It’s as simple as that. Some auspicious star must have brought everything together.”
Iain Glen was part of that perfect cast, the original Kuzovkin, in the view of some the Fool referred to in the title of the play. But Glen departed the production (which opened last year on December 19) on January 9 citing health difficulties and it was announced that William Houston would take over the role. However, tonight Kuzovkin was played by Patrick Cremin, Glen’s original cover, and it appears that Houston too has withdrawn from the production.
On any view of it, then, Poulton’s perfect cast is no more.
So it is quite hard to judge Poulton’s vision for the play, but on the evidence of tonight’s performance, he looks at the piece with rose-coloured glasses.
It is not a great adaptation of a great unloved play. At best, on the basis of this production, it is a joyless incarnation of a piece which throbs with possibility. As it unfolds, one can see how it might be glorious, properly cast and directed with clarity, vision and absolute certainty.
According to the programme, the director is Lucy Bailey.
Richard McCabe gives a stand-out performance as the foppish, prissy and almost very funny Tropatchov. As soon as he arrived on stage, the energy and sparkle that had been sadly missing was suddenly there. In abundance.
Lucy Briggs-Owen is delightful as Olga and Alexander Vlahos showed no sign of his days as Mordred in Merlin (quite unrecognisable) in the key part of Olga’s new husband, the slightly pompous but out-of-depth Yeletsky. What they both needed was a surer idea of what they ought to be doing to make the piece skip along magically and you could see each desperately trying to reach the unreachable.
According to the programme, the director is Lucy Bailey.
As Pyotr, the ambitious over-reaching but all-seeing footman, Dyfan Dwyfor gives a crisp and genuinely appealing performance, one of the few of the ensemble who seems to understand that this is as farcical as Turgenev gets and approaches the task with relish, a firm commitment and precision. Marked precision.
As Karpatchov, a comic gem of a role requiring both subtlety and profoundly clever comic timing, Richard Henders has, quite simply, no idea. Nothing he does is funny but it looks like it should be. As Trembinsky, the idiosyncratic, nervous and exasperating and exasperated steward, Daniel Cerqueira is violently unfunny, overacting and distracting in equal measures. Neither actor understands the rhythms of the writing or the comedy.
According to the programme, the director is Lucy Bailey.
In the key role, Patrick Cremin is no more than serviceable. It is impossible not to feel sympathy for him given the circumstances that led to his assuming the role. But while he is able enough and delivers all the lines, he does not have the inner energy, the understanding of the mind of the character or the necessary rapport with McCabe essential for the part to work properly. He more than gets by, but he does not provide the piece that competes the puzzle.
According to the programme, the director is Lucy Bailey.
The rest of the cast are heavy handed about everything they do. There is much sighing, chicken-like movement and tut-tutting from the servants – it’s like some dystopian version of downstairs at Downton Abbey. The trouble is that none of it is co-ordinated or controlled or channelled in a particular direction, with the result that nothing comes of anything. It is plain that the cast are scrabbling to find ways to make scenes work, that they are colouring in the performance as they go to make it sing.
It is as far away from riotously funny as pretty much anything you could imagine.
According to the programme, the director is Lucy Bailey.
William Dudley provides a thoroughly lovely set which Bruno Post lights very effectively and evocatively. John Eacott’s music matched the production perfectly.
It is slightly mystifying that Kevin Spacey did not step in to replace Glen.
But then, according to the programme, the director is Lucy Bailey.
Perhaps that really explains everything.
