SCANDALTOWN
Lyric Hammersmith
Directed by Rachel O’Riordan

Only rarely do playwrights receive the honour of having more than one of their plays running at the same time on the London stage. Even more rarely do they have more than two running simultaneously. But that’s what has happened to Mike Bartlett in 2022, with Cock at the Ambassadors Theatre, The 47th at the Old Vic (recently reviewed in these pages), and now Scandaltown at the Lyric Hammersmith. This play, in the style of a Restoration comedy, shows why he’s so successful – it delivers a rollicking night of laughs for the audience and wryly comments on the political and social trends of our time without taking a side in the culture wars.

The play opens out in the sticks, with Phoebe Virtue (Cecilia Appiah) conversing with her guardian, Aunty Julie (Emma Cunniffe). Phoebe’s brother, Jack (Matthew Brooke) has made the journey to London and is apparently volunteering for the RSPCA. But when Phoebe receives a letter from him, she makes a terrible discovery – no, not the cocaine sitting in the envelope, but the unmistakeable inky imprint of the Daily Telegraph. Horrified by the thought of Jack reading a right-wing newspaper, she decides to head to London herself to rescue him. Her upper-class manner of speaking and the poetry of Bartlett’s language help make this opening scene tremendously funny, and the strong start continues through the first half of the play as we are introduced to a cast of characters with suitable names – Mrs Tweetwell, Tom Eton, Lady Susan Climber. The full ensemble is soon brought together for the ‘Netflix Masked Ball’, and chaos ensues as the characters get progressively drunker and cases of mistaken identity occur.

Unfortunately, the second half is significantly weaker. This is partly the consequence of mimicking a particular style of theatre, with much of the initial humour coming from our introductions to the over-the-top characters and the strangeness of hearing seventeenth century dialogue in what is supposedly present-day London. Once we become acclimatised to the characters and language, the laughs dissipate, and the situation isn’t helped by Bartlett’s reluctance to drive the plot forward at pace. Thankfully, the ending is satisfying enough to almost make up for the post-interval lull.

It's also easy to forgive the faults that appear later in the play when the humour comes so thick and fast at the start. Rachel O’Riordan’s direction brings the visual gags to life, while Bartlett’s writing pokes fun at Londoners and those living in the provinces, at Conservatives and those on the Left, at the young and at the old. The jokes are brought to life by the eclectic mix of characters. Matt Eton (Richard Goulding) is the most brilliant caricature, a stereotypical Conservative MP who enjoys some debauchery behind the scenes and is – as he repeatedly tells us – the Secretary of State for Procurement. He’s an amalgamation of senior Conservatives including Boris Johnson (Goulding played the current Prime Minister in the 2019 television film Brexit: The Uncivil War), David Cameron, former Health Secretary Matt Hancock, and current Secretary of State for Levelling Up, Housing and Communities Michael Gove. At a time when the real Tory party seems to be returning to the sleaze and scandals of the 1990s, this portrayal hits home with great comedic effect – there’s a knowing reaction from the audience when he comments ‘if I get caught cheating on my wife, it may make my career in the Conservative Party slightly more difficult’.

Eton’s earliest appearance comes alongside Lady Climber (Rachael Stirling), who will do anything for social approval and wants to live her life with complete freedom from any kind of responsibility. She’ll do whatever it takes to pursue fame, morality be damned. In contrast, Phoebe is self-righteous and permanently offended, regularly pointing out why other characters should rephrase their lines so as to avoid upsetting others – Appiah is the pick of the performers, seeming naturally at home with the distinctive vocabulary and syntax of the Restoration comedy.

Phoebe’s brother Jack is the rake of the show, and another star. He’s intent on living a life of consequence-free freedom, sleeping around and taking drugs with abandon. When people try to bring to his attention the consequences of his behaviour – two of his housemates are working at the Netflix Ball because he’s behind on his rent – he fails to see the problem as he reiterates his belief in freedom and his disdain for those who take offense easily (such as his sister), culminating in an excellently delivered speech to the audience where he speaks in praise of freedom and against the ‘tyranny of virtue’, suggesting that we all hold beliefs that we would now not dare to express publicly. This is Bartlett’s attempt to crowbar in a thought-provoking debate on the relationship between freedom and responsibility – do we face a dichotomous choice between the two, or can they sit together and, if so, how? Answers to those questions come in the final scene, but they are sketchy and unconvincing.

This attempt to bring a serious, complex theme into a play that is otherwise straightforwardly comedic doesn’t really work – there are a couple of powerful moments, but the atmosphere is one of jovial fun rather than deep introspection. We delight in Kinneti Isidore’s extravagant costuming, Good Teeth’s elaborate set design, and the Bridgerton-esque music with a hint of bombast about it. The humour works because it pokes fun at anyone and everyone without taking itself too seriously, and attempting to philosophise on the nature of freedom and responsibility only undermines the key objective of the play – for the audience to have fun. As a modern Restoration comedy, the play fulfils its brief. The laughs are regular, the costumes glorious, and the over-the-top characters depraved yet likeable. Like pantomime, it provides a hilarious romp of an evening, a crowd-pleaser that will send most home happy. Just don’t expect anything more profound than that.

Scandaltown is playing at the Lyric Hammersmith from 8 April to 14 May 2022.

-Christopher Day is currently a PhD student at the University of Westminster.