Comic age of reason
Written in 1732, the play is set in mythical Greece though the ambience is deeply French.The situation is also simple, even if the background is complex; both Martin Crimp’s otherwise impeccable translation and the production could do more to clarify the crucial exposition.
In a nutshell, Leonide is a princess who has fallen in love with Agis, whose throne she wrongfully occupies; her aim is to conquer his heart while surrendering her power. Since Agis has been brought up in rustic seclusion by a philosopher and his puritanical sister, she has to get past their inhospitable defences. She does this by disguising herself as a man, Phocion, and then switching genders to seduce the virginal sister, the love-hating philosopher and eventually Agis himself.
That garden is beguilingly realised in Jeremy Herbert’s set in which leafy luxury counterpoints love’s cruelty; I was less happy with Nathalie Gibbs’ costumes, which are placeless and timeless, although the play is anchored in 18th-century France. But the shifting moral tone is perfectly caught in Helen McCrory’s polymorphous Phocion, who is mischievously aware of her sexual power and switches from macho snarls when seducing a woman to flirty oeillades when playing with a man. Colin Stinton as the smugly secure philosopher also moves brilliantly, under love’s assault, from buttoned-up containment to arm-waving abandon. And Linda Bassett – in a black wig that gives her a startling resemblance to Ann Widdecombe – is both deeply sad and richly funny as his immured sister suddenly giving way to sexual appetite.
“Is man not a social animal?” Stinton asks her at at one point as they sit in brooding separation on a garden bench, and that moment sums up perfectly both the sanity and irony at the heart of Marivaux’s delicious comedy. You can’t live by reason alone but, once you surrender to love, you are at the mercy of total madness.