The 2000 Chichester season begins with the beating of a miltary drum, but the overall effect is more of a whimper than a bang. James Kerr's production approaches George Farquhar's 1706 play about military officers attempting to enlist recruits as if it were a dirge, not a comedy. Tanya McCallin's plain set looks beautiful in Tom Mannings' atmospheric lighting, but its blank nothingness is part of the void at the heart of this dispiriting production.
Farquhar's roll of wide-eyed country folk, lovelorn heiresses and sergeants and contsables with an eye to the main chance, scamper across the stage but seldom leave much impression. Only Natalie Walter's Rose, a girl well aware of her charms and ready to capitalise upon them, Nicholas Le Prevost's blustering Captain Brazen and Nicholas Tennant's Sergeant Kite, a decent man corrupted by his calling, give any sense of fully rounded characters.
Part of the problem with Kerr's production is that it fails to provide any real social or financial context: the play appears to take place in some burnished no man's land rather than the small Shropshire town with its distinct social hierarchy that Farquhar specifies. You need to know of the social and financial gulfs between the would-be lovers to understand why Silvia disguises herself as a boy to test Plume and why Melinda is so wary of Worthy's suit.
The detailed depiction of army life is rather more successful, particularly in the relationships between the soldiers. But it is hard to sit through this dreary three hours when the payback in terms of laughs is so paltry. It is not an experience that will win any recruits either for Farquhar or the Festival theatre.
