The Misanthrope

Published Friday 18 December 2009 at 11:05 by Jeremy Austin

There’s only one thing you want to know about this revival of Martin Crimp’s 1996 translation of Moliere’s greatest comedy, and that’s can Keira Knightley act on stage?

Keira Knightley (Jennifer) and Damian Lewis (Alceste) in The Misanthrope at the Comedy Theatre Photo: Tristram Kenton

And the answer? Aside from a voice that is almost as thin as she, yes, she can.

Her Jennifer is the embodiment of the superficiality of celebrity from the physical surroundings (living in the temporary accommodation of Hildegard Bechtler’s stunningly-designed hotel room), to her career (in which she is accused of swapping her integrity for pornography) and her relationships.

She plays her with an arrogant strength, within which Jennifer’s self-belief is strong enough to banish any awareness that life is one big act. During a newspaper interview Jennifer bitches about others in front of her friends and her friends in front of others, playing up to a the stereotype of a starlet, safe in the knowledge that their needs tie them to her with binds stronger than friendship.

This is all undertaken in rhyming verse, which stage newcomer Knightley takes in her stride. Thea Sharrock and Martin Crimp insist that this nod to the original text is subtle, almost alluded.

There is allusion to the original play throughout. Damian Lewis as Alceste, the titular misanthrope, and his long-suffering friend John, played by Dominic Rowan, comment that their discussions are like something out of Moliere, and the French playwright’s laboured endings are made a virtue.

Lewis’ Alceste is happy in his interpretation of the world - one in which brute honesty is a far nobler approach than the two-faced double-talk practiced by the rest of his species. But somehow his tragedy, that superficiality has an almost evolutionary advantage over honesty, is eclipsed.

Lewis doesn’t do enough to make Alceste the anti-hero he should be. Rather, he’s somewhat of a pathetic figure - a reasonably successful writer on the verge of a mid-life crisis.

Sharrock highlights this in the final scene, with Alceste the only character still in modern dress, hopelessly out of place among the rest of the cast, lavishly dressed in period costume.