Living through the troubled times of civil war between crown and parliament and the birth pangs of empirical science was a personal tragedy for the English philosopher Thomas Hobbes of ‘Leviathan’ fame.
Another is to have become posthumously involved in Adriano Shaplin’s teeming drama, specially written for the RSC ensemble, from which he scarcely survives as a coherent thinker, despite a lively, comic portrayal by Stephen Boxer.
As the leading English philosopher of his day, a man whose head was crammed with notions, he was constantly up against rival factions both political and scientific. Shaplin has dived head first into this seething mass of troubles to produce an overlong cod history of the era, using alchemist-cum-physicist Robert Boyle as a stick to beat Hobbes.
Theatrically speaking, this is a vivid reconstruction of a society in turmoil between the Playhouse, the Restoration court and the elements that joined forces to create the Royal Society. It provides dozens of brilliantly staged set pieces and opportunities for bravura acting. But Elizabeth Freestone’s staging - a vertiginous affair set on several levels in current RSC vertical style - is too rich a mixture to take in at one sitting.
Amanda Hadingue in the breeches role of Boyle is the calm centre of the action, while James Gardon and Angus Wright act everyone else off the stage with their dazzling thespian pyrotechnics as Restoration actor laddies, neatly upstaged by Peter Shorey as a camp cavalier in tight trousers.
But the greatest risk taken by Shaplin is to import a long scene from Thomas Shadwell’s The Virtuoso, a wicked lampoon of the Royal Society and its pseudo-science, which provides us with the best-written, most lucid example of dramaturgy in an otherwise often confusing evening.
Production information can change over the run of the show.
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