{"id":1599,"date":"2018-05-08T17:55:27","date_gmt":"2018-05-08T16:55:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/?p=1599"},"modified":"2018-05-08T18:03:18","modified_gmt":"2018-05-08T17:03:18","slug":"propwatch-the-fans-in-the-way-of-the-world","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/2018\/05\/propwatch-the-fans-in-the-way-of-the-world.html","title":{"rendered":"Propwatch: the fans in The Way of the World"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

There\u2019s no limit to how much bad acting you can do with a fan, if you\u2019re in a folderol frame of mind. Point it for emphasis, snap it shut in high dudgeon. Make peekaboo eyes over the top or flutter it for the full coquette. It can easily become camp. Anyone who doesn\u2019t enjoy costume drama onstage will be no fan of the fan.<\/p>\n

But it doesn\u2019t have to be this way. Most of the props that sashay into this series are proper little scene stealers. Whether a sociopathic doll<\/a> or recalcitrant ironing board<\/a>, they pull focus from their human co-stars and make it all about them. Not so the fans in James Macdonald\u2019s superlatively lucid production of The Way of the World<\/em><\/a> at London\u2019s Donmar \u2013 they\u2019re as committed ensemble players as any of the quality actors around them.<\/p>\n

Revivals of Restoration comedy \u2013 that awkward late 17th-century genre of fops and fortune-hunters in flounces \u2013 often unleash an embarrassment of fanwork. Working from the misbegotten assumption that a) the play has to be superfun and that b) it actually isn\u2019t, directors break out the clack and flutter, giving their female actors a lot of faff with accessories.<\/p>\n

This was clearly the case in the original productions. Restoration writers had an eye for fan flirtation. In The Spectator<\/em>, Joseph Addison parsed \u2018the fluttering of the fan,\u2019 distinguishing between different kinds of flutter: angry, modest, timorous, confused, merry and amorous.\u2019 Harriet, the heroine in Etherege\u2019s The Man of Mode<\/em>, gets a fan tutorial: \u2018clap your fan then in both hands, snatch it to your mouth, smile, and with a lively motion fling your body a little forward.\u2019 And, in the same play, the horndog hero assesses his success by notching how many women he has provoked to break their fan in the grip of strong emotion.<\/p>\n

The Donmar\u2019s cast have certainly taken their fan classes, as described in an invaluable education pack<\/a> (composer Max Pappenheim led the cohort \u2013 prompting assistant director Jo Tyabji to quote Simone de Beauvoir: \u2018one is not born a woman, but becomes one\u2019). Yes, Anna Fleischle\u2019s sumptuous frocks and frock coats are fully accessorised. Lady Wishfort (Haydn Gwynne, pictured above by Johan Persson), who hosts the tangled plot\u2019s intrigues, has botanical embroidery on her fan. Others are the thrillingly deep colours of the dresses. And yes, people periodically point and snap them, put up a diversionary flap if caught off guard.<\/p>\n

What’s so funny about that?<\/strong><\/p>\n

But none of this is panto-style, because here\u2019s the thing. Macdonald doesn\u2019t direct Congreve\u2019s 1700 drama as a comedy, but simply as \u2013 a play. It reminds you how labels can warp our responses. Tragedies are set in the past, or far away, and end in death. Comedies are set in the here and now end in marriage. What\u2019s so funny about that? Macdonald (best known for clearsighted takes on new plays by Caryl Churchill and Annie Baker) doesn\u2019t suppress the chortles, but makes everything as clear as it can be. Congreve\u2019s tight nest of characters are tangled up in family and finance. In most plays, you can define a character as predominantly \u2018the wife\u2019 or \u2018the father.\u2019 Here, Arabella Fainall \u2013 horribly shafted by the plot \u2013 is alternately daughter, wife, ex, employer, friend and frenemy, depending on who she\u2019s speaking to.<\/p>\n

As with the fans, so with the frolics: it\u2019s not an especially sexy production, and that\u2019s a bonus. Restoration revivals can be sticky with innuendo, but here everyone wants to get not just laid but (more difficult, this) loved. Lady Wishfort, despite the harsh sneer of her name, yearns for grand romance, making her a mark for a plausible con. Mirabell\u2019s women are repelled, dumped, pursued \u2013 but (slightly bafflingly) still they love him. Even Petulant, the local lout, pays women to call at him so that he can appear a player in the amorous economy.<\/p>\n

Love raises the stakes, because relationships then pivot round who you can trust and what you can afford. The cast met economic historian Amy Louise Erickson (who, pleasingly, has written a paper on fans and Fanny Burney), and you sense that they\u2019ve thought very precisely about everyone\u2019s bank accounts. Less flush than they pretend, mostly \u2013 no wonder the coffee house massive end up travelling with a wealthier chum, or that Millamant guards her six grand so charily. The play\u2019s villains, Fainall and Marwood, are only a couple of rungs about penury, in my reckoning \u2013 if cut loose they\u2019ll sink. No wonder they snarl.<\/p>\n

This is real talk. True misery and loneliness stalk the play \u2013 fears more pressing than the fragile relationships that hope to paper over the cracks. No amount of frisky fanwork can compensate for being married off to an abusive crook, or watching the person you long for pursue someone else. You\u2019d bet that most of the characters will end up miserable \u2013 I\u2019m not certain that the central couple, Millamant and Mirabell, won\u2019t be among them. Flutter cannot make that scenario more cheerful.<\/p>\n

Follow David on Twitter: @mrdavidjays<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s no limit to how much bad acting you can do with a fan, if you\u2019re in a folderol frame of mind. Point it for emphasis, snap it shut in high dudgeon. Make peekaboo eyes over the top or flutter it for the full coquette. It can easily become camp. Anyone who doesn\u2019t enjoy costume […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":1600,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_genesis_hide_title":false,"_genesis_hide_breadcrumbs":false,"_genesis_hide_singular_image":false,"_genesis_hide_footer_widgets":false,"_genesis_custom_body_class":"","_genesis_custom_post_class":"","_genesis_layout":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[143,322,321,510,34],"class_list":{"0":"post-1599","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-uncategorized","8":"tag-donmar","9":"tag-props","10":"tag-propwatch","11":"tag-restoration-comedy","12":"tag-theatre","13":"entry"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1599"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1604,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1599\/revisions\/1604"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1600"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1599"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1599"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.artsjournal.com\/performancemonkey\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1599"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}