The Stage

She Stoops to Conquer

Published Wednesday 1 February 2012 at 10:01 by Mark Shenton

The National Theatre recently won The Stage 100 Award for Producer of the Year, recognising its expanding portfolio of interests away from its South Bank home and its global reach, not just with Broadway transfers like the imminent One Man Two Guvnors but also its NT Live broadcast initiative. But it could equally win the title just for the work on its main stages, not to mention its impromptu outdoor and pop-up ones like last summer’s Paintframe project.

Cush Jumbo (Constance Neville), David Fynn (Tony Lumpkin) and Sophie Thompson (Mrs Hardcastle) in She Stoops To Conquer at the Olivier, National Theatre Photo: Tristram Kenton

Here’s a theatre that fires on all cylinders, and lately it has specialised in adding to the gaiety of the nation with a run of comic hits that as well as One Man Two Guvnors also currently includes The Comedy of Errors. Now it continues its role as an all-conquering laughter factory with a rollicking, fantastically funny production of Goldsmith’s 18th-century classic of town and country manners She Stoops to Conquer.

Jamie Lloyd, best known for his forensic, small-scale work at the Donmar and with plays by Alexi Kaye Campbell at the Royal Court, now makes his impressive NT debut by scaling up to its largest stage. But there’s no loss of detail in the hurtling momentum he achieves with this blissful comedy of romantic and social mismatches and affectations.

Although there’s an over-broad, overboard performance from Sophie Thompson as Mrs Hardcastle that would be more comically effective if it was reined in a bit, Harry Hadden-Paton is just perfect as the aristocrat who comes to woo her daughter Kate (a poised Katherine Kelly) but finds himself totally tongue-tied and only comfortable around the lower orders. A parallel romance between their friends Hastings and Constance is also gorgeously played by John Heffernan and Cush Jumbo.

Designer Mark Thompson deploys the Olivier stage to spectacular effect, dissolving from drawing room to forest in an instant. The National has another monster comic hit on its hands.