It’s rare to have a wasted evening at the Ustinov, the studio space round the back of the Theatre Royal Bath that specialises in British premieres. And this new version of an 1863 farce (Célimare le Bien-aimé) by the French playwright Eugène Labiche, a precursor of Feydeau, is no exception. As you might expect from a man who knocked out 175 plays in 40 years, it’s ingenious and neatly crafted without being anyone’s idea of a masterpiece. Yet it’s rendered with such loving care by its adapter and director, Jeremy Sams, that it’s fascinating even when it’s not laugh-out-loud funny.
Sams has also composed a few ditties that top and tail scenes, which sets up a slyly lighter-than-air tone from the off. Raymond Coulthard plays the Parisian playboy of the title, Celimare, who’s trying to burn all his old love letters on the day of his marriage, age 47, to 18-year-old Emma (the excellent Charlotte Wakefield). This retired rake’s penchant for married women comes back to haunt him, though, as two of their cuckolded husbands insist on turning up for first the wedding, and then the honeymoon. “They’re un-get-riddable-of,” he complains in his natty cream summerwear, “they’re like snot on suede.”
Monsieur Popular brings a knowing wit to its stock elements: the harrumphing father-in-law; the jealous, virginal bride; the boobyish husbands. Yet it never lingers too long on any one device, binds us to our lubricious antihero as he addresses the audience directly like a stand-up comic, smilingly fills us in on the saucy details while working hard to keep from social ruin. Polly Sullivan’s period design works wonders in a small space.
Coulthard gives three quarters of a fabulous performance. He’s got the right smooth collusiveness, the right sense of winging it as he navigates from near-disaster to near-diaster, he just needs a bit more end-of-the-pier energy sometimes to keep the play’s pulse going. The story ends with a solution to his insoluble problems that plays less like the satire it’s meant to be, more like a huge dose of luck.
Still, the supporting turns are terrific, be it Stephen Matthews as the capable servant – “these are the wages of sin,” he tells the master who must pay penance for his philandering before he can deserve true love – or Howard Ward as one gullible, clubbable cuckold or Gregory Gudgeon as the punctilious, pompous, yet achingly vulnerable other one. Frothy, frisky fun.
Box office: 01225 448844, to Nov 7