Reviewer Steve Sutherland finds The Fair Maid of the West at the RSC a five-star, festive feelgood love letter to the pub
Review: The Fair Maid of the West, Swan Theatre, until 14th January
PROLGUE
“Sometimes you wanna go/ Where everybody knows your name/ And they’re always glad you came/ You wanna be where you can see/ Our troubles are all the same…” – Theme Song from Cheers.
TIS the season to be jolly and they don’t come much more ‘o be joyful’ than this roistering take on The Fair Maid Of The West, a seldom-performed piece written back in 1631 by Thomas Heywood.
The original may be a bit of a shonky yarn composed to flatter Elizabeth I and mock her Spanish foes, but director/writer Isobel McArthur has had the biggest fun playing fast and loose with the fabric so we can pile right in and enjoy without a PHD in the Tudors. Strikes me they must have been putting something naughty in the water around these parts because this is the second show running at the Swan set in a boozer with the landlady as the fulcrum. The brilliant Cowbois has just shipped out, making way for this Fair Maid and she’s swaggered in to take on the challenge of the hard-act-to-follow and, incredibly, darn near carried it off.
The best way I can find to recommend it is like this: You know how Horrible Histories was for kids but it was sassy and smart and crafty and witty enough that adults could also get into it? Well this is like Horrible Histories for adults but all older kids are welcome. And if that doesn’t rock your boat, we may as well all just down tools, guzzle our dregs and pack it in.
Our Maid serves up a similar joie de vivre to Cowbois and boasts a cast of characters to match. There’s Liz, the rat-catcher-turned-mein-host-turned-heroine played beautifully with rousing spirit by Amber James, surrounded by a motley crew, each and every one of whom is utterly loveable. There’s Clem, the 13-year old punky orphan, an unlikely genius with numbers, played with foul-mouthed pluck by Emmy Stonelake. Then there’s the cuckolded divorcee Bardolf learning to piece himself back together performed with blubbing sensitivity by Matthew Woodyatt. And there’s Philip Labey’s splendid Spencer, the posho who fancies Liz and dresses like Elton John. Not to mention the Spaniards – Marc Giro’s dashing Duke De Lerma and David Rankine’s campy King Of Spain come mighty close to stealing the whole show when they get it on.
Our main anchor is Richard Katz as the pilot of the iambic pentameter, architect of most of the play’s more cheeky meta moments and… well, I’m not gonna to spoil it for you with a gratuitous reveal. But, fabulous as this lot are, they’ve got their work cut out competing with Tom Babbage’s stupendously garrulous Windbag, the postie with the mostest, indeed. Oh, and there’s loads of great music with a nutty Glaswegian human jukebox to boot.
INTERMISSION
“The most important thing to remember about drunks is that drunks are far more intelligent than non-drunks – they spend a lot of time talking in pubs, unlike workaholics who concentrate on their careers and ambitions, who never develop their higher spiritual values, who never explore the insides of their head like a drunk does.” – Shane MacGown on behalf of the Live Life To The Full Follow Your Star And Don’t Let The Bastards Grind You Down Party.
Back to the action: One of the timeless themes this Fair Maid tackles is chivalry which has always been a complicated business – just ask Heywood’s contemporary Sir Walter Raleigh: one moment he was the bee’s knees for laying his cloak over a puddle to save the queen’s feet from getting splattered with mud, the next it was, “Off with his head!”.
When the smitten fop Spencer is duped into standing up for Liz when she’s being slagged off by bullying blokes in the bar – the act that launches our tallest of tales – one of the geezers gets a blade in the guts and snuffs it. Liz is furious with her would-be knight in shining armour, perfectly capable of fighting her own battles, thank you very much. Now there’s a corpse on her hands, she’s been saddled with the blame and Spencer resorts to a baffled sulk surely recognisable to every bloke who doesn’t know whether it’s the done thing anymore to hold a door open or give up a seat for a lady. The patriarchy, as it’s fulsomely explained, is a steaming pile of poo produced by privilege. So, as the play points out with much gusto, is the monarchy, Brexit and a heap of other injustices which are slapped silly in an endless volley of quick-fire one-liners. Thinking back, I can’t recall one single moment that the quips quit coming atcha, even when the drama takes a turn to the tragic.
If you’re going to shell out on a show over Christmas, forget the rest and make it this one. We can all do with as much feelgood as we can get at the mo’, ain’t that the truth ladies and gents and everyone else? And anyway, Fair Maid is one long love letter to the pub so, y’know, what’s not to like?
EPILOGUE
Now that the cockles of our hearts have been so merrily warmed, I’d like to leave you, if I may, with one last sobering thought: There are currently about 46,800 pubs functioning as going concerns in the UK. Due to the cost of living crisis and the crazy price of stuff, they are closing down at the rate of two per week. What that means is, if I live as many years from now as have elapsed since Heywood wrote The Fair Maid (392 years or 20,384 weeks) there will only 6,038 pubs left open. (I think I got that right; maybe Clem could check the math). Anyway, I reckon we should all holler for a law like the ones they slap on country piles and suchlike, one of those listed building thingies, to protect all pubs as of right now. Guess what: I’ll drink to that.
