Review: Fanny Hill, Bristol Old Vic

“This is my sock, and it has been most vilely ill-used!” Bristol Old Vic’s production of John Cleland’s incendiary 18th century erotic novel Memoirs of a Woman of Pleasure, adapted for the stage by National Theatre playwright April de Angelis, effortlessly achieves the two things at the top of everyone’s check list for it: it’s sexy, and it’s funny. But there’s more to be found in here, too.

Caroline Quentin is splendidly earthy and, well, cocksure as the older Fanny, exhuming her eventful past as a London prostitute in order to write the novel that will bring her, she hopes, literary stardom and untrammelled luxury.

Gwyneth Keyworth is beguiling as Swallow, the prostitute who plays the part of Fanny’s younger self (intertwining this, interestingly and at times poignantly, with episodes from her own life). Perhaps the pick of a very fine bunch, though, is Phoebe Thomas as Louisa, Swallow’s colleague – a formidable, sharp-tongued Cockney furnace, by turns arch and coruscating, bawdy and fiery.

Andrew D. Edwards’ set is relatively minimal, allowing for the quick scene changes demanded by a play that flits between past and present, bedroom and antechamber. Fanny and company disport themselves around it in a variety of witty and/or louche scenes, like a series of Hogarth postcards. De Angelis’ script, meanwhile, is a treat: crisp and witty, peerless at evoking sex in a number of hues from sultry to slapstick; but also, giving the show its extra depth, lyrical too.

Because, although tonight is essentially a giddy trot through the younger Fanny’s (and Swallow’s) variously enjoyable sexual encounters, the feelings that bubble up underneath all these gymnastics are lyrically rendered too.

Both women have loved and lost: both have seen glimpses of a calm, orderly life that, when all the jokes have been told, they know they’d prefer to this one. Men will come and go from their bedrooms and their bodies: emotions, thoughts and longings will stick around in their minds. And this, coupled with the older Fanny’s fierce intelligence and striking way with words as she extemporises her memoirs, show us that tonight is as much about the head and heart as the loins.

Music, composed by Bellowhead’s Pete Flood, is put to good use too. At moments, its changing tempos are used to suggest all parts of the act – fast, slow, tender, frantic, building up to the inevitable crescendo (one sequence representing the transports of a huge and frenzied penis is particularly absorbing). At other moments, though, songs can lend a moment’s stillness to an otherwise frantic assemblage of bawdy scenes – reminding us, again, that there’s more to this story than couplings and comedy.

Yes, there’s plenty of sex (suggested in various ingenious and coquettish ways – alluded to with sly winks and crooked fingers, just as Fanny herself would have favoured) and there are plenty of laughs, but there’s also something quite moving to take away too. Pleasure will come and go (and the pursuit of it can itself be pleasurable): feelings and ambitions stick around.

The Life and Times of Fanny Hill continues at Bristol Old Vic until Saturday, March 7. For more info and to book tickets, visit www.bristololdvic.org.uk/fannyhill.html

Pictures: Helen Maybanks