Famous as the first play staged in Australia, a reflection of its enormous popularity at the time, George Farquhar’s comedy The Recruiting Officer is something of a rarity in performance these days. Oxford’s first production of the 21st century, last week’s Playhouse offering from student group Tiptop, proved an enjoyable, suitably larky affair from which its writer’s ready wit emerged reasonably intact if sometimes lacking in polish.
Director Helen McCabe brought a distinctly pantomimic air to the opening scene, with a roster of rhubarbing rustics gathered in Shrewsbury’s Market Square. One almost expected an appearance by Widow Twankey or Dick Whittington’s cat. Instead, we were treated to the patter of recruiting sergeant Kite (the excellent Edwin Thomas).
This lynch-pin of the action is a useful facilitator in the Figaro mould, with a suitably raffish master in Captain Plume (Tim Pleydell- Bouvererie) whose amorous ambitions provide the mainspring of the plot. This is convoluted enough to require (and receive) a synopsis in the programme, though it was greatly to the credit of the young cast that the action at all times remained comprehensible.
One possible hiccup might have come, for some, with the appearance of the play’s principal female love interest Silvia (Harriet Tolkein) disguised as a man. The large cast coupled with the traditional shortage of men in student drama groups had already been responsible for our seeing a number of rather unlkely ‘men’ on stage here. Silvia’s emergence as Jack Wilful might easily have been mistaken as another expedient instance of cross-dressing.
Well done all round.
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