Review: Love for Love, Bristol Old Vic

In a world of intrigue, duplicity and gossip, is it possible to find true love?

Man about town Valentine Legend is in love with the wealthy heiress Angelica: but there’s a problem. Having spent all his money on extravagant living, Valentine is now being disinherited by his curmudgeonly father Sir Sampson, who wants him to sign over his inheritance to his younger brother Ben, a sailor who is also looking for love.

Meanwhile, sisters Mrs Frail and Mrs Foresight are busy in town looking for men to give them what their husbands cannot. In the midst of these various intrigues, Angelica strives to make true love win through.

Congreve’s witty, wordy tour de force is child’s play for the young stars at Bristol Old Vic Theatre School. Subtle additions to the actors’ performances demonstrate the sheer commitment and skill of the cast: the creditor Trapland’s (Matt Jessup) shaking leg as he downs a glass of wine, Valentine’s (Timothy Innes) coiled poise, Foresight (Dominic Allen) gazing into the corners of his brain and Mrs Frail’s (Rosie Nicholls) command over her twisting, turning personalities from coy to manipulating to gleeful.

Actors ease into their roles with professionalism as the scenes progress and relationships become more entwined and tangled. Ryan McKen’s bombastic Caribbean Nurse (complete with pectorals bursting forth from his frock) brings the audience to tears with his lean, comedic performance and impressive vocal range. Matt Jessup’s portrayal of the servant brings the house down as he is barged out of the way by the bodacious nanny, and provides the audience with a surprise song sung in sweet falsetto. Jessup’s singing and slapstick deserves a show of its own.

As a troupe the cast deliver a tight, measured performance, playing the more polemical scenes with a mature sensitivity. The scenes that discuss class issues are memorable, suggesting that the performers’ knowledge of the play’s wider themes were understood further than the confines of the theatre.

Sam Woolf as Tattle and Shala Nyx as Miss Prue in the garden scene are evidence enough here: Tattle lectures Miss Prue with the words “All well bred persons lie” before retracting his comment in the prevailing scene: “I could never tell a lie to a person”. The couple’s performance perfectly frames the fickleness of Congreve’s timeless characters.

The shining star is Dominic Allen’s Foresight, whose diagnosis of his believed ailing health brings the audience to a bout of raucous chortling. Staging is as balanced as Ben Legend’s ship and the touching watercolour backdrop immersive, amplified by the glow of candlelight.

A very capable cast bring this 17th-century farce and enduring undercurrents to vivid life.

Love for Love continues at Bristol Old Vic until Saturday, June 27. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.oldvic.ac.uk/whats-on/love-for-love.html