She Stoops to Folly
Los Angeles Times
With "She Stoops to Folly," Irish playwright Tom Murphy transforms
Oliver Goldsmith's 1766 novel "The Vicar of Wakefield" into a
wonderfully absorbing play--considerably shorter and less
all-encompassing than Charles Dickens' "Nicholas Nickelby," but very,
very similar. The reason: Novels told great stories in the days when
a character's struggle to maintain virtue was a real cliffhanger.
Why, authors could hinge entire plots on the question of a woman's
chastity.
Murphy's adaptation, charmingly staged by Barbara Damashek at South
Coast Repertory, is named in homage to Goldsmith's play "She Stoops
to Conquer." It is misnamed, though, because the story centers on the
Vicar Primrose, here played by Jim Norton with a rare blend of
dignity and foolishness, as if he managed to fuse Ian Richardson and
Stan Oliver. The woman who stoops to folly is Olivia (Devon Raymond),
the Vicar's credulous daughter. She is seduced by the thoroughly
evil Ned Thornhill (played with relish by Douglas Sills) when the
family loses its fortune and must board on Thornhill's estate.
"Folly" has its share of devious villains and disguised saviors, all
of them easily recognizable to the audience if not to the family
Primrose. The pleasure of the plot lies not in its surprises (there
are none) but in its delightful and evenhanded tone, one that
acknowledges life's cruelty while celebrating its warmth and
absurdity.
This masterfully told story is played out on Ralph Funicello's
ingenious set, which features huge, half-hidden clockwork above,
wheels that stand still during the scenes and go round when the
action stops. The movement of these timepieces, accompanied by Nathan
Birnbaum's percolating incidental music, coveys the inexorable
passing of time but with a lightness and whimsicality that permeates
Goldsmith's tale. Rakes will surely progress, the clocks seems to
say, but goodness wins out in the end.
From the cast of "Nicholas Nickelby," Jane Carr plays the Vicar's
wife, known only as Mrs. Primrose. This is a woman who loves her
husband for his goodness but at the same time finds his constant
morality inconvenient to her worldly ambitions. When the family is
forced to find common lodgings in another town, she pronounces the
town's name--"Low Groansbury"--with a delicious combination of
condemnation and fortitude that perfectly characterizes her.
The large cast is very good in instantly conveying everything an
audience needs to know so that the plot can go its way. Raymond's
Olivia is foolish without being ridiculous, and Jennifer Parsons is
efficiently virtuous as the more sensible sister Sophy. The only
actor who must be darkly unreadable, Ron Boussom, is nicely
dangerous as Thornhill's sometimes malicious friend Reverend Jenks.
Art Koustik is very funny in a small part as an abused servant, as is
Emily Chase as an overly powdered and crinolined prostitute. And
Sills is the kind of smiling rake (or snake) who can make an audience
hiss with his apparently irredeemable ways (or are they?).
The Vicar's foolish belief in the general rightness of the world
eventually gives way under a Job-like string of sorrows. He is brave
in the face of poverty because he believes to the bottom of his soul
that there is no shame in it. In Olivia's seduction, he is confronted
with actual shame (according to his society and his religion), and he
is unfailingly generous and forgiving. But when he is locked in
debtors jail and unable to help his family through ever-worsening
crises, he has had enough. He stands on a table and demands an
accounting from God.
The Vicar pulls himself together to deliver to the prisoners a sermon
on suffering and "its peculiar rewards to the unhappy." In this
remarkable speech, which is pure eloquence, the Vicar manages to find
comfort in suffering without the enshrinement of martydom, a nifty
and rare theological trick.
If the playwright errs, it is at the end, when the family regains its
lost stature. This finale is almost tossed off, encouraging laughs
not at the story's happy conclusion but at the absurd ease with which
fortunes fall back into place. Here Murphy seems to lose faith and
acknowledge an overly quaint quality to the tale. Henry James called
this novel "happy in the manner [of] a man who has married an angel
or been appointed to a sinecure." The dark is thrown off with too
much force, and a story that has managed throughout to avoid the
sappy falls into it at last.
-Laurie Winer, Los Angeles Times
1995
Biography | News | Photo Gallery
Fan Thoughts | Music | Lucy's Page
This page hosted by 
Get your own Free Home Page