William Archer once dubbed Wycherley's original 1675 comedy "the most bestial play in all literature". But Tanika Gupta's modern rewrite, which reopens the handsomely refurbished Watford Palace, is unlikely to shock the local citizens. Having brilliantly given Hobson's Choice a multicultural facelift, Gupta here sanitises Wycherley's gloriously filthy, below-the-belt comedy.
She starts by fiddling with the basic premise. Wycherley's Horner, a practised womaniser, feigns impotence to gain easy access to the ladies of the town. However, Gupta's Hardeep, a London-based Punjabi rapper who has just landed a fat recording contract, puts it about that he has taken a vow of celibacy. Although this makes him a safe escort for a local politician's dolly-birds and a magnet for an imported bride from rural India, you rather wonder why he bothers. Given his reputation as a randy rapper, he hardly needs an excuse to gain entry to the capital's boudoirs.
By relocating Wycherley's play to modern London, Gupta also drains it of its satirical lewdness. In Wycherley's original, there is a notorious scene where a group of supposedly respectable women retire to Horner's chamber to inspect his "china". Here, a pair of mini-skirted dollies simply go to look at his "X-box", which robs the scene of its social sting and phallic suggestiveness. And, although Gupta wittily shows the captive Asian bride text-messaging Hardeep to convey her secret passion, she gives them a sentimental love song that undercuts the original's ruthless cynicism.
One or two intriguing racial points emerge from Gupta's multicultural adaptation: in particular, an urban Asian businessman's fury at discovering his sister has a black admirer. Lawrence Till's production also boasts buoyant performances from Stephen Rahman-Hughes as the supposedly celibate Hardeep, Ryan Early as his medical-student chum who knowingly confides in the audience, and Amanda Gordon as the rustic bride who, at one point, poses as a cheeky schoolboy. But the whole point of Wycherley's original, which was to expose the hypocrisy of a sexually obsessed society, gets lost when it is relocated to our own permissive, contemporary Babylon.
· Until October 30. Box office: 01923 225671.
