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The Review - THEATRE by DAN FRANKLIN
Published: 21 February 2008

Christopher Niederberger as Jack Rover and Camilla Rockley, as Mary Amaranth

Fine performances save us from mild porridge...

WILD OATS
Upstairs at the Gatehouse

THE problem with staging a “riotous” Regency-era comedy today is that the humour that would have tickled its contemporary audience is somewhat lost on a bitterly cold Tuesday in Highgate.
The Lost Theatre Company’s game production of Robin O’Keefe’s play is a farce of slapstick violence, flirty hi-jinks and layers of mistaken identity.
These stock elements of the source material soon begin to tire, and the fact it makes much of quoting and satirising Shakespeare betrays how pale O’Keefe’s comedy now appears in comparison to the playwright it borrows from so heavily.
So it must draw its strength from elsewhere. It’s a good thing Christopher Niederberger is clearly up for his role as Jack Rover, quite literally a “bounder” who throws himself into his lithe, slightly camp character with gusto.
When he’s not casting knowing glances at the audience his performance comes over as a less out-of-control version of Rick Mayall’s Captain Flash Heart from the Blackadder series, and he even leavens the obligatory barn- dancing finale by repeatedly messing it up.
Elsewhere, and typical of comedy of the period, the characters are often merely types. However, Mary Amaranth (Camilla Rockley) is an exception: a self-determining if somewhat over-earnest landowner and philanthropist.
The political issues the play touches upon, including the portrayal of the crushing yolk of the feudal system (which red-nosed Farmer Gammon is more than happy to exploit to his own ends), seem of little relevance now but there’s enough wit and vim in the cast to carry this production.
Until March 1
020 8340 8488

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