The Stage

La Bete

Published Thursday 8 July 2010 at 11:54 by Mark Shenton

La Bete was a fast Broadway flop when it originally premiered in 1991 and ran for just 25 performances, but it scored a bigger success when it came to London’s Lyric Hammersmith the following year, even winning the Olivier Award for Best Comedy. That production nevertheless failed to transfer to the West End.

The Princess (Joanna Lumley), Valere (Mark Rylance) and Elomire (David Hyde Pierce) in La Bete at the Comedy Theatre Photo: Manuel Harlan

Now, however, David Hirson’s Moliere-lite (and Moliere-like) satirical social comedy of theatrical manners, cast entirely in rhyming couplets, finally arrives in the West End, en route back to Broadway where it has already been booked to begin a run at Broadway’s Music Box Theatre in September.

That’s a show of confidence as much in its new star as the play - as fired by another bravura star turn from Mark Rylance, the most compellingly watchable actor of his day, he turns it into another instant must-see. It’s his third leading West End role in the space of just eight months, in which he has gone from the inescapably bleak Beckett of Endgame to the illuminating brilliance of Jerusalem, and while it is true that La Bete is easily the least considerable of those plays, it is also a stunning vehicle for an actor to not merely command the stage but virtually own it.

The play begins with an irresistible flourish, as director Matthew Warchus stages an amazing operatic dinner party tableau, unfolding behind a scrim, which the dissolves into Mark Thompson’s extraordinary library of books stretching to the ceiling and beyond, where we find two theatrical types, Elomire and Bejart, discussing the problems of court politics and artistic patronage, and the fact that they’re being asked - even required - to add a new member to their theatrical troupe at the insistence of the Princess.

When Rylance’s Valere finally appears, food and drink spewing from his mouth in the manner of Barry Humphries’ Sir Les Patterson, belching and farting as he goes on, we soon see why they’re reluctant. But then any actor might be reluctant in the face of the total onslaught of obnoxious personality and power that Rylance projects - and in a monologue that stretches across nearly 16 uninterrupted pages of text and has a playing time of nearly half an hour, all that David Hyde Pierce and Stephen Ouimette as Elomire and Bejart can respectively offer are facial responses.

They always say never to act with children or animals, but now a new category needs to be added - Rylance. He runs away with the evening. It is greatly to the credit of Pierce, cast to type as cynical straight-man to Rylance’s court jester, that he holds his silent own for so long - it’s a masterclass in responsive acting. Joanna Lumley is elegantly wasted (in every sense) as the Princess. Warchus may be mining familiar territory from the artful plays of Yasmina Reza to offer another disputation on the nature and value of art, but anyone who loves great acting will want to see this.