By Louise
Link: https://www.guildford-shakespeare-company.co.uk/she-stoops-to-conquer
Available until: 18th July
She Stoops to Conquer by Oliver Goldsmith is a really enjoyable play. It is a lot of fun and nothing really bad happens, but even though it was written in 1773, it has quite a contemporary outlook in some ways and I think you can learn a lot about people from watching this play.
It is especially enjoyable when it is as good a production as this. I think it might be quite difficult to get this play exactly right. It is very funny and some of the comedy might seem quite frothy and on the surface, and it could be played completely as a comedy where all you do is laugh at the characters. There are some brilliantly funny lines and situations.
The Guildford Shakespeare company brings the comedy across really well and I love the way they say the lines and use physical comedy and pauses in order to give the play even more comedy, but Tom Littler’s production also makes the characters into human beings who you really care about and really want to be happy in the end. I think this is really important for a play like this, at least for me. I like to be entertained, but I like to be emotionally invested too. If I’m entertained, I’ll enjoy watching a play, but if I’m emotionally invested, I’ll go on thinking about the play for a long time after the performance. I was very emotionally invested in this production.
The play is performed outside, which is much safer for everyone, but Neil Irish has made the set as detailed and as elegant as you’d expect in an indoor production of this play. The stage is quite small, but everything is cleverly arranged so the cast have all the props and sets they need, but they have been directed really carefully by Mr Littler so the stage never seems cramped or overcrowded. Everything just fits together.
The play looks like it has been updated to the 1930s – the female characters in particular have really beautiful flapper clothes designed by Mr Irish. I think my favourite is the pink dress Constance wears at the end, but all the costumes are so lovely. There is also some lovely incidental music, composed by Matt Eaton. It is in a Charleston style and it sounds very traditional. The characters also dance Charleston steps, choreographed by assistant director Indiana Lown-Collins. The actors have good swivel and it is so much fun to watch.
The actors are brilliant and it is lovely to see different ethnicities in the cast (though I hope one day, this will be so normal, I wouldn’t even think about mentioning it). Natasha Rickman is an intelligent, vivacious and really loveable Kate Hardcastle. Rachel Summers is really warm and womanly as Constance. Sarah Gobran is hilarious and completely delightful as Mrs Hardcastle.
The male actors are great too. James Sheldon plays the two different sides of Young Marlow really well and he always seems convincingly the same person. Tom Richardson is very funny as Hastings. Corey Montague-Sholay is a really loveable rogue as Tony Lumpkin. Robert Maskell puts so much detail into his performance in Mr Hardcastle, especially in the way he moves, but he’s never a caricature. Matt Pinches, who I remember from Guildford Shakespeare’s Henry V, completes the cast brilliantly as Diggory and Marlow Senior.
She Stoops to Conquer is so much fun – I’m so happy Guildford Shakespeare
made it available online.
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