Educating Agnes

Published Monday 28 April 2008 at 13:40 by Thom Dibdin

Stilted in its direction and forced in its delivery, Theatre Babel’s new production fails to find the heart of Liz Lochhead’s translation and adaptation of Moliere into modern idiomatic Scots. The bald outline, of old Arnolphe’s stupidity in creating innocent Agnes for his own wife, is there. Yet there is no feeling that this is in any way relevant to its audience.

The chief difficulty lies in Graham McLaren’s direction of Kevin McMonagle as Arnolphe, Sean Scanlan as his cuckolded but wiser friend Chrysalde and John Kielty as the young blade Horace, who falls for Agnes behind Arnolphe’s back. All deliberately force the rhythm of the verse, often drawing attention to the rhymes for comic effect.

The result does draw laughs, but it also reduces the play to the level of comic recitation. It betrays an inherent distrust in Lochhead’s script. Particularly her dropping of modernisms and idiomatic Scots into incongruous mouths - which needs no extra attention to be funny.

There is relief. Anneika Rose creates a blithely innocent Agnes, although the humour of her innocence is only created on a bawdy level, without revealing the subtleties available. Ironically, it is only Lewis Howden and Maureen Carr as Arnolphe’s crude servants, Alain and Georgette, who find any real subtlety here.

The thin apron playing area doesn’t help relieve the stasis of the performances. McLaren’s design - a backdrop of a blown-up oil painting of a red-faced letch gazing on a naked girl - provides constant reminder of a theme that should be drawn from the play itself.