Oliver Goldsmith, who wrote She Stoops to Conquer under pressure of ever-mounting debts, had the greatest difficulty in getting the play on and then found the actors weren’t keen to be in it. Contrary to their expectation, the first performance in 1773 was a great success. 250 years on, Tom Littler’s broad production updates the play to the 1930s.
She Stoops to Conquer is one of the most delightful plays in the English language: it’s good-humoured, humane, affectionate, charming and beautifully constructed. The story is said to have been based on something that actually had happened to Goldsmith in his youth. He mistook the country house of a wealthy neighbour for an inn and treated his host as a landlord during his overnight stay.
Young Marlow (Freddie Fox), as he is the first to admit, has “the Englishman’s malady”. Brought up by an awful domineering mother, who never allowed him to mix with women of his own class, he is only at ease in the company of whores. He is so painfully shy that when he meets Kate Hardcastle (Tanya Reynolds) for the first time he can’t even look her in the face and stammers away, leaving her to complete all his sentences.
Kate, a knowing, witty, sexy young woman, quickly realizes that the best way to penetrate his bashful reserve would be to pretend to be lower class and so she adopts the role of servant. Fox and Reynolds relish the sexual innuendos.
David Horovitch is perfect casting for Mr Hardcastle, the kind-hearted, elderly, country gentleman, who hankers after old-fashioned courtesy and is outraged to find his prospective son-in-law impudently treating him like an innkeeper.
Guy Hughes, who plays Tony Lumpkin, Mrs Hardcastle’s rustic son by her first marriage, dominates the stage whenever he is on, which is not surprising, since in the nineteenth century the engagingly mischievous Lumpkin (who sets the comedy in action) was perceived as the leading role and attracted the greatest actors of the day.
Tom Littler’s dancing curtain-call leaves the audience in good humour. I came out of the theatre, hoping there would be more revivals of neglected classical comedies.
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