A busy day in London in the summer of 1800, when marriages are made in heaven and hell and old genes meet new money, turns out to be a not particularly productive evening in the theatre.
This "lost" play by the popular novelist and diarist Fanny Burney, which languished unperformed in an American library for 200 years, is a minor curiosity, of interest largely as a rare play by a woman of the period. A small production in an intimate theatre might make you warm to what is essentially a jolly courtship romp with some waggish lines, but Jonathan Church's cumbersome, overblown production doesn't succeed in making any greater claims for it and loses a great deal by not trusting the humour. Miss Eliza Watts, fostered in infancy by Mr Alderson of Calcutta, returns to London with an £80,000 inheritance to meet the family she has never known because they were too poor to keep her. But since then Mr Watts has made a fortune in the City, most of which Mrs Watts and elder daughter Peggy are wearing on their backs like gaudy peacocks.
Matters are complicated by the fact that Eliza is the love of the poor but well- connected Mr Cleveland, whose grand titled relatives despise City money and have earmarked him for the rich, well-bred Miss Percival; and complicated still further when Cleveland's wastrel younger brother decides that marriage to Eliza will pay off his debts.
It all comes out right in the end, of course, with everyone getting the partner they deserve, but the unravelling of the plot is something of an endurance test. This is a play that requires the lightest and crispest of touches. It should be like fresh linen. But Church encourages most of the cast to mug like mad. Sara Crowe's eye-rolling flibbertigibbet Miss Percival is all cheese, Ben Moor's Lord John is more flop than fop and Stephanie Beacham's snobbish Lady Wilhelmina simply booms her disapproval at both her wards and the audience like some kind of panto dame.
Leave this one to American tourists in search of costume drama.
Booking to January 2001. Box office: 020-7494 5560.
