The Stamford Shakespeare Company are an institution in the local area. Founded in the sixties, various machinations have meant they are in the very enviable position of having a permanent theatre, quite a coup for an amateur company. More than this, it’s an outdoor venue (pre-dating Regent’s Park’s outdoor theatre) in an area of pretty gardens and an oldish building, Tolethorpe Hall, as the backdrop.
Judging by the costuming and set design, they may also be one of the most solvent amateur theatre groups in the country - last year I saw The Woman in the Van, a production that included three vans. In my time reviewing productions over the last year and a half, I reckon the Stamford Shakespeare Company are richer than most professional companies.
It creates a strange, quite magical and very English phenomenon. On a performance level it involves amateur acting (though often very good amateur acting), supported by more-than professional budget in an event that is a centrepiece for the local area.
What happens is, the great and the good (and the wannabe or thinktheyare great and good) from Rutland, Cambridgeshire, the posh bits of Lincolnshire, like the Deepings and such, all congregate on this manor house and gardens. There they park their cars (ours was parked near small gravestones for ‘Gypsy’ and a number of other cats) and carry picnics through to the grounds. My mum is a powerful picnic maker, but even her efforts are dwarfed by people who bring chairs, tables, tablecloths, flowers in vases, candles in candle holders, silver cutlery…it’s a heaven for Hyacinth Buckets.
After this elaborate feast, the picnics are packed up and the people are called to the auditorium, inside for the audience, outside for the performers. The stage is ringed by bushes and trees and there is usually an elaborate set, sometimes with multiple levels. We went to see George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer. There were shops on one side with a shambles and fruit stall that was also accessible on a higher level. Behind was a simpler ‘house’ set and a full standing market hall. Coming up are a full cast in period dress, a little clumsy swordfighting, a bunch of jokes - some of them working, some of them not, and a folk band.
I’ve been to see the Stamford Shakespeare Company a number of times - although, I’m not sure I’ve ever seen the Shakespeare, that’s usually earlier in the summer than when I visit. There have been some very good plays, the newer ones I’ve found the best, particularly The Lady in the Van. However, the play is definitely just one part of the wider experience. This would likely be my last chance to visit though and I was pleased it was coinciding with an 18th century piece.
I thought The Recruiting Officer quite a bold choice for a company most comfortable in Shakespeare, Wilde and Noel Coward. Eighteenth Century stuff simply doesn’t have the cultural ubiquity to make it easy to approach as a performer or an audience, lacking the prestige of earlier theatre and relatability of newer. This is especially true of Farquhar’s work, coming at the beginning of the century and essentially being the last gasp of restoration ‘humours’ comedy.
In the backdrop of the recent successes of the War of Spanish Succession, a group of grenadiers come to recruit for their regiment in the mostly sleepy town of Shrewsbury. The main recruiter is Sergeant Kite, a man perfectly suited for recruiting work because of his full list of vices. He’s perfectly happy to flim-flam, trick or bully a person into the service for the commission he will get. At one point he even poses as a fortune teller, in order to get the people of the town to accept the army as their fate.
His commander is Captain Plume, well loved of the town and its magistrate, he’s also beloved of his daughter until her older brother dies and she is now worth much more. Will she (or more importantly, her father) settle for a simple captain now. In a similar position is Squire Worthy, his beloved, Melinda, has also come into some money and is using that to punish him for his presumptions towards her during their early courtship. To add to his problems, he has a rival suitor in Captain Brazen, an extravagant fop.
One of the historical elements that I was most excited about was that The George, the hotel I stayed at during my earlier successful trip to Lichfield and my recent unsuccessful one, claimed to be the place Farquhar stayed when he was himself a recruiting officer and the inn and town were inspiration for a number of plays including The Recruiting Officer. How distressing then, that the play says it takes place in Shrewsbury. However, there is a reference to watching the clocks of the churches of St Mary’s and St Chads - both Lichfield churches. Indeed, Samuel Johnson was to be baptised there a couple of years after the play was performed.One of Davey Garrick’s first productions was an amateur production of The Recruiting Officer, in which he gave himself a plum role.
Talking of plum roles, Colley Cibber had a huge hit with his take on Captain Brazen, the outré fop, but fops were his speciality. I really need to write a bit more about him and his fascinating family at some point.
As for the 2024 performance at Tolethorpe, how was it?
One problem with an old comedy is not spotting the jokes that are right there, the other is creating jokes out of nothing. This production was guilty of both these sins. There was a particularly modern elision of the camp inherent in the fop character and homosexuality. Not that there wasn’t a little of that then, but it was an era where men did sometimes wear makeup and often had high heel shoes and ribbons and such. It was fashionable to speak in a fop-talk and lard as many foreign phrases as possible. Really the fop should be understood as closer to hipster or something of that ilk - and to have him cop a feel of Captain Plume whenever possible doesn’t really understand what a fop was.
What’s more, there were an awful lot of “gay..hehehe” jokes for a modern production. I suppose the audience at Tolethorpe skews old and such Are You Being Served jokes still land well - but a younger or more metropolitan audience would have been perplexed at the attempts to create laughs out of gay panic. Jokes that weren’t really in the text. There were the misunderstandings of ‘the fop’ as a character, but there was also a lot of misunderstanding of how common it was for people to bunk up together. That the soldiers shared beds wasn’t a terrible indication of gayness in the military, simply a reflection on poor pay and limited bed space.
It was also one of the more indifferently directed plays I’ve seen there. A lot of clumped blocking, not very good use of a large stage, with people in tight areas throughout. The sword fight and the pistol duel weren’t really maximised for comedy or suspense. There was a scene with a man hiding under a table during a crystal ball reading that felt like it had a lot of potential on the stage (such as the table leaping about the stage as the crystal ball reader says its possessed) that didn’t fully cohere in the cramped tent set they were using.
There was a very good scene involving lots of innuendo about breasts of chickens and the breasts of the chicken seller, and the comic pairing of Costar and Tom was very good. I also enjoyed the performance of Brazen, who had the theatricality of the fop down pat, especially the way Brazen fumbles for a heightened elegance he never quite reaches.
I had a lot of pleasure going to see The Recruiting Officer and I’m sorry I probably won’t get to be going to see the Stamford Shakespeare Company for a while. If you want to experience something very unique, next year they are playing it safe with two Shakespeares and an Oscar Wilde.
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