FringeReview UK 2016
The Fancies Chaste and Noble
Wanamaker Globe Education
Genre: Classical and Shakespeare, Comedy, Drama, Theatre
Venue: Wanamaker Globe
Festival: FringeReview UK
Low Down
Read Not Dead rules are simple: actors volunteer, are given scripts on a Sunday morning, and scripts in hand, enact at four p.m. or afterwards.
The troubling, puzzling Platonic Comedy of 1635-36, The Fancies Chaste and Noble which the Ford-admiring T. S. Eliot wish he’s not written. It seems Ford too was troubled by the main thrust of his Platonic premise, but what he makes of it is fascinating – particularly in the sub-plots – and its flavour, sometimes sour, is unique.
James Wallace directs a cast led by Tim Frances Elliot Fitzpatrick, Bella Heesom, Daisy Hughes John Sandeman and John Sandeman.
Review
Read Not Dead rules are simple: actors volunteer, are given scripts on a Sunday morning, and scripts in hand, enact at four p.m. or afterwards.
James Wallace directs a cast led by Tim Frances Elliot Fitzpatrick, Bella Heesom, Daisy Hughes John Sandeman and John Sandeman in the troubling, puzzling Platonic Comedy of 1635-36, The Fancies Chaste and Noble which the Ford-admiring T. S. Eliot wish he’s not written. It seems Ford too was troubled by the main thrust of his Platonic premise, but what he makes of it is fascinating – particularly in the sub-plots – and its flavour, sometimes sour, is unique.
Ford’s lesser-known plays are often burdened by busy counter-plots and occasional inertia. It’s true of the RSC’s recent (2015) revival of the equally dormant Love’s Sacrifice, and to a lesser extent here in one of his comedies where such things are part of the furniture you bark your shins against. Literally, since the audience were invited to sit down inside the actual space used for the play, at least in the first half.
The title refers to three young women old and reputedly impotent Duke Octavio (benignly orotund Tim Frances) is salaciously keeping as muses in his court. In fact they’re his nieces, and the Neo-Platonism then enjoyed at the Caroline court is utilised to suggest how lewd our own suspicions are: it’s all about protection and educative nurturing. Yeah right. We don’t really buy it, and nor does Ford, as his busy-sub-plots make clear.
Chief amongst these are a pair of warring brother-sister siblings. Livio (Elliot Fitzpatrick) has been persuaded by the smooth-talking nephew Troylo-Saveli (John Sandeman in svelte commanding form) of said Duke Octavio to give his sister Castamela (Daisy Hughes) over to the uncle, and for Castamela to join the other three Fancies. Livio is advanced but then suffers a conscience strike: he’s prostituted Castamela for his own advancement.
Her own lover Romanello (Rhys Bevan) is infuriated with her, and with his own sister Flavia (characterful, sexy and clearly more experienced Bella Heesom). She’s been sold off by her impoverished former husband the ex-scholar Fabricio (Theo Kingshott as dishevelled here as he’s smooth as a Servant), to their mutual sorrow – she’s always secreting him sums of money. However, she’s now with the Duke Julio de Varana (Howard Horner) and though sorrowing (this wasn’t really brought out enough, though Heesom was distinct in her part) accepts her lot, just as Fabricio conveniently expiates his scholastic self by entering an order.
Her brother Romanello though rails against this, and though he’s reconciled is less easy about the fiancée he’s lost and says he’s renounced marriage. And he really finds he has: Castamela has thus found him unworthy (he’s been merely peevishly jealous on occasion) and accepts smooth nephew Troylo-Saveli who persuaded her brother Livio to place her in the Duke’s care to begin with. That element isn’t prepared for at all though we realize Troylo-Saveli’s the most cunning of all and whose wit alone deserves praise and – one supposes – the choice of shrewd girls. However both Livio – who challenges Troylo-Saveli in a rash moment – and Romanello, are enjoined by Duke Octavio in the denouement to pick one of the acquiescent girls remaining, and Livio’s has been already suggested to him.
The subplot – a sort of Dekker guild cum Middleton city comedy echoed in late Jonson – is more of a delight though not quite wedded to the main one. It too revolves around sexual impotence and the recrudescent imagery of mushrooms growing on dung and being transplanted owe more to Ford’s fantastical fancies than a particular rootedness in dramatic truth. But the language here is wonderfully rich in Jonsonian badinage, and lends unique insights into late Caroline London. Who else after Jonson shut up shop was writing them? Or with Ford’s uneven but often great skills? James Shirley, more pallid and decorous, isn’t in sight here.
This subplot involves a raffish barber the uppish Secco (a superbly mirror-preening Jack Wharrier) and his supposed fixer eunuch sidekick Spadone (Martin Hodgson, also over the top, with a tremendous voice), who’s forever crossing him till Secco and the secretary Nitido (Robert Heard) – nearly played on roller skates and already much abused by Secco mistakenly, have a chance to shave more than the gelding’s beard off. Spadone confesses he’s no gelding and is allowed too to keep his throat and make friends again.
Secco too has also been humbled. He’s married for obscure financial gain – it’s not quite clear – Morosa (Virginia Denham in faded funny hippy-gear) an older lady who’s in fact guardian to the fancies is allowed free rein in both a list-litany of wheedling and raillery, and gains the upper hand. Secco is bizarrely jealous and accuses his sexagenarian wife of infidelity. This is well-acted, and if Hodgson’s Spadone is unconscionably louder than he realizes, the whole was infested with brio, shaving cream, roller-skates and at one point when a mock letter isn’t available, an improvisatory tearing off of the script’s front-piece to act as letter. One or two fluffs and one missed queue (the hapless roller-skated Heard) were dealt with much good humour by an audience aware they’d started rehearsing this morning. The results were truly magnificent, a superb dramatized reading of mostly bearded men and less vivid women.
The play, from around 1635-36, is deserving of revival, and would work well, but it’s a teasingly rarified taste despite the bawdy which enlivens relatively two-dimensional characters. As one with me said, these obscure pieces are sometimes obscure for a reason. Nevertheless, the sub-plots reveal vivid parts, the dramatic language and one or two plot elements – such as the true pathos between Fabricio and Flavia – fathom the great dramatist of ‘Tis Pity She’s a Whore and The Broken Heart. If Ford’s great tragedies – these latter two and for instance the tremendous Perkin Warbeck to begin with – were regularly performed, people might forgive this comedy almost as much as they do Shakespeare’s Two Gentlemen of Verona. But we need to place quite a few Jonson and Middleton comedies before even Ford’s fancies in the queue first.
