History, as he proved in plays about George III and Hogarth, has always been Nick Dear's forte. Now in Power, at the Cottesloe, he takes us into the glittering intrigues of the court of Louis XIV.
But, while the result is witty, elegant and strikingly well acted, it left me wondering whether the play had anything to say about our own form of pseudo-presidential politics.
Dear sets the bulk of the action in 1661, the year when the young Louis, on the death of Cardinal Mazarin, takes over the reins of power. Louis himself is an embryonic absolutist with a love of show and spectacle. But the main focus is on his friend, Nicolas Fouquet, whose vast wealth has in the past saved the monarchy and who lusts to be first minister.
What we see is the gradual ruination of Fouquet, who is indicted for embezzlement and whose sensual stylishness impinges on the king's personal terrain.
Fouquet finally tells us "that power's an illusion but Louis is the master of illusion". What Dear's play really proves, however, is that power is an elaborate game in which the absolute monarch holds all the courtcards.
Stung by Fouquet's presumption in creating the private palace of Vaux le Vicomte and influenced both by the fiscal prudency of the debt-investigating Colbert and his mother's poisonous envy, Louis finally sacrifices his old friend. The moral? Not simply that power corrupts but that when absolute rule is allied to political cunning the subject is always the loser.
Dear dramatises the story skilfully and enlists our sympathy for feckless Fouquet. It is certainly difficult not to warm to an impulsive rake who announces that "I make it a rule, if I'm not in bed by two, to go directly home".
But while the play has insight and is informative, it is hard to see its relevance to today. We live in a world where monarchy is largely a symbol and where even political power is subject to checks and balances, including media scrutiny. So it is a fascinating history lesson rather than a play for today.
It is, however, staged with dazzling clarity by Lindsay Posner and boasts a performance of great panache by Robert Lindsay as Fouquet: forever smoothing his moustache and biting off his consonants as if they were bread crusts, he is the epitome of open-hearted generosity and melancholy insecurity.
Rupert Penry-Jones as the power-loving sun king, Stephen Boxer as his lugubrious accountant, and Barbara Jefford as his Austrian mother wreathed in angry dignity, are equally fine.
Michael Nyman's Lullyesque score adds lustre to a play that opens a window on the past without telling us much about the present.
· In rep until October 2. Box office: 020-7452 3000.
