Trafalgar Studios 20 April – 22 July. Reviewed by Claire Roderick
The Philanthropist starts with a wonderfully distasteful bang, but Simon Callow’s production doesn’t consistently deliver the laughs it should.
Christopher Hampton’s response to Molière’s The Misanthrope, set in the cosy bubble of academia in the early 70s follows Philip, a bland and affable philology lecturer whose idea of a good night’s entertainment is anagram games and carpet bowls. After his fiancée Celia’s dinner party, Philip’s need to not upset people, coupled with his stunning lack of empathy, results in him spending the night with the university man-eater, Araminta.
The young cast do a fine job, but considering Simon Callow’s less than restrained acting style, under his direction their performances are slightly muted. This play needed Matt Berry declaiming in full Toast bellows; as it stands, the pompous Braham is slick and suitably slimy, but some of his more outrageous lines fall flat when delivered so mildly. The loudest thing about Berry was his suit. Unfortunately, a lot of the jokes fall flat in the dinner party scene, which feels overlong, awkward and very stilted. (This may, of course be the realistic feeling of being stuck in social hell that Simon Callow intended to create?) The second act is much better, with the characters showing more emotion and becoming more 3 dimensional.
Philip is too close to Simon Bird’s Inbetweeners character to allow the actor to do anything different to his usual shtick, which mostly works, while Tom Rosenthal has a ball as Don, the laziest lecturer in the university. Lily Cole looks gorgeous and prowls around as Araminta, but brings a wonderful sadness and strength to her broken character as she opens up about her past to Philip. Charlotte Ritchie holds the play together as Celia, giving a wonderful performance as her exasperation with Philip turns into despair.
Libby Watson’s stylish white set evokes a powerful sense of time and space, rooting the play firmly in the 70s, when the assassination of the Tory front bench was something to laugh about. The characters’ opposing views on socialism and art are still relevant, but this play is definitely a period piece. Interesting, and with some fine performances, especially from the female cast, but the first act needs sorting out before The Philanthropist can be wholly satisfying.