The Recruiting Officer

I feel like I should make a few disclaimers to begin this post, just so you take my praise with an appropriate grain of salt.

I love the Donmar.

I am ever so slightly obsessed with Mark Gatiss (I follow him on twitter!).

Steven Moffat was sitting 20 feet away from me when I saw this performed.

The cast is 98% comprised of very good-looking men (there are some women as well).

Good?  Awesome.

This production is the first for the Donmar Warehouse’s new Artistic Director.  Given the quality of the show, I think we need not worry about the regime change.  The audience files in as the actors walk about the stage lighting the many candles surrounding the space.  This, combined with the scenic design, evokes a warm tavern or public house of the late 1600s.  It’s really cool is what I’m saying.  Five of the actors also double as musicians, whose antics add to the fun of this hilarious show.  And it’s a lot of fun.  There’s cross dressing, bawdy humor, and a German doctor named Conundrum from the far away land of Algebra (in the words of Captain Brazen: “I find his place of nativity hard to calculate”).  And that’s just one scene. 

The comedy is tinged with a hint of realism, stemming from the playwright’s experience as a recruiting officer.  Farquhar wrote this play in a time of patriotism and pride in the British army in the aftermath of the War of Spanish Succession.  There was a certain glamour surrounding the officers of the army. But the final scene of the play (I won’t say how) still manages to evoke the horrors of war.  It leaves you with a slightly unsettled feeling in spite of the post-comedy high.  Which I think makes this a really good play.  The acting is wonderful, the lighting (both candle and instrument) is perfect, and the set pulls the whole thing together into a very realistic, mutable environment; but the writing and the directing make the production special.