Misalliance

With Misalliance, the Adelaide Rep present a visually striking and highly energetic production of one of George Bernard Shaw’s lesser works. Issues of class struggle, gender roles, family dynamics and politics are explored through the prism of a typical British country house comedy.

Hypatia (Anna Bee), daughter of insecure underwear tycoon Tarleton (Lindsay Dunn) is engaged to be married to the foppish Bentley (Simon Lancione), son of the distinguished Lord Summerhays (Peter Bleby).  Tarleton invites the prospective in-laws round to his country estate in Surrey for a spot of afternoon tea, and things do not go well, with Bentley alienating Hypatia’s brother (Mark Drury) and mother (Julie Quick) with his crassly childish behaviour and intellectual elitism. Just when it seems like things can’t get any worse, an aeroplane crashes into the conservatory, throwing two bemused adventurers (Adam Tuominen & Leah Craig) into the mix, and a wannabe revolutionary (Leighlan Doe) shows up at the house with the intention of assassinating Tarleton, whom he perceives as the embodiment of capitalist evil.

The plot is little more than an excuse to set up a series of heated debates between the characters, who are caricatures rather than fully rounded human beings, each designed to lampoon the foolish prejudices peculiar to a certain class of people. What keeps the play afloat is the biting wit of the dialogue and the sometimes ferocious passion with which it is delivered.

Some first night jitters were in evidence, in the form of a dropped prop and a handful of flubbed lines. Hopefully, the cast have got it out of their system now, because even with these odd glitches their performances are impressive in their emotional intensity.

Bee and Craig’s depth of commitment to the material is particularly notable, the subtleties of their facial expressions and body language ensure that their characters always come across as fully engaged with the conversation, even when their characters are not talking. When they do open their mouths to speak, they are a suitably commanding presence, Craig especially.

Lancione and Doe were the comic scene stealers of the evening, provoking belly laughs from the opening night audience with some inspired physical-comedy flourishes during scenes that aren’t inherently funny on paper, and could easily have been played in a dryer, talkier fashion.

Pleby, Drury, Quick and Tuominen adopt a different tack, teasing out the moments of real vulnerability lurking beneath the characters’ stuffy, pretentious façades. There are some genuinely poignant moments where they almost come across as human.

From the moment the curtain comes up, Misalliance is a visually engaging experience. The set immediately impresses with its level of homey detail, full of knick-knacks which give the room character whilst clearly serving a functional purpose and without cluttering up the stage.  The costumes are superbly evocative of the time period, the lighting and sound subtly effective, the blocking well timed for maximum comic effect whilst not straining believability too much.

All things considered, those with a taste for argumentative humour will be well catered for with this generally quite polished production of Misalliance – whose imaginative visual aesthetic and impassioned performances do much to compensate for the more badly dated, and preachy aspects of the play itself.

Benjamin Orchard