The Stage

The Recruiting Officer

Published Wednesday 15 February 2012 at 10:22 by Mark Shenton

This October will mark the Donmar Warehouse’s 20th birthday since it re-opened as an independent producing theatre under Sam Mendes and, across its nearly two decades, has only had one other artistic director Michael Grandage. Between them, they turned the Donmar into the most prized and successful studio theatre in town.

Tobias Menzies (Captain Plume) and Mark Gatiss (Captain Brazen) in The Recruiting Officer at the Donmar Warehouse, London (previous picture shows Mackenzie Crook as Sergeant Kite) Photo: Johan Persson

So Josie Rourke has a tough act to follow in taking over the artistic reigns now, working alongside a new incoming executive producer Kate Pakenham. But splashing out on a big set and cast of 14 actors, Rourke - who first came to the Donmar as an assistant resident director in the Mendes years - shows an instinctive grasp of how to make it the most energised and charged of spaces.

Her timing also couldn’t be better. Perhaps it’s just a coincidence but this production of Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer (originally premiered in 1706) marks the third major revival of a classic 18th century comedy in as many weeks, after the National’s She Stoops to Conquer (1773) and The Way of the World (1700) at Sheffield’s Crucible. So it feels as if it is the culmination of a mini-season reappraising this great era of English social comedy. And in another obvious coincidence, this is also the third production on a major stage to feature former stalwarts of the League of Gentlemen comedy troupe, too - after Steve Pemberton was seen in She Stoops to Conquer and Reece Shearsmith in Absent Friends, now it is the turn of Mark Gatiss to reveal effortless comic elan as a fop here. He helps to establish a knowingly contemporary comic sensibility to the playing that is also perfectly in period.

Around him, the other members of a superb ensemble cast also radiates pleasure and confidence, with tremendous turns from a dashing Tobias Menzies as Captain Plume and Nancy Carroll as Silvia, the woman he woos, with her gender disguise as a man creating a sense of further ambiguity around their relationship. Mackenzie Crook also works comic wonders with Sergeant Kite, not least when he disguises himself as a fortune teller.

The result is the quintessential Donmar show - it looks and sounds gorgeous (designed by Lucy Osborne, with music by Michael Bruce), it is cast to the nines, and is at once intimate yet expansive, funny and detailed. Rourke’s regime has got off to a cracking start.