Golden Opportunities Reviews
The Financial Times Review
By Ian Shuttleworth
It is surprising that the English-speaking world première of Eugine Scribeis 1828 comedy Le marriage de argent takes place only now. Surely someone must have spotted its potential as a zeitgeist-capturing piece during the acquisitive heyday of the 1980s. Or possibly not, since it may have been hidden amid the works of the most prolific playwright in history: before his death in 1861 Scribe had seen more than 400 of his plays, vaudevilles and opera libretti produced. Moreover, Golden Opportunities (as the play is entitled in Anthony Curtis’s eminently playable English version) does not exactly toe the “greed is good” party line. What is particularly impressive, and consistently fascinating, is its blend of the standard confections of romantic comedy, rivalries, confusions, misunderstandings and concealments, with an utterly unsentimental acknowledgement that wealth can be at least as much of a driving force, and at least as fulfilling a goal, as love.
The financially embarrassed Poligni is torn between his long-lost sweetheart, the now widowed and not by any means comfortably off Mme de Brienne, and his stockbroker friend Dorbeval’s vacuous but heavily dowried ward. The third in the male trio, rising painter Olivier, is also in love with Mme de Brienne; meanwhile, Dorbeval’s wife has been flirting more than is good for her, and when a too-fervent letter for her arrives and Mme de Brienne pretends that she was its addressee... well, unsurprisingly, entanglements ensue. Yet, throughout, Poligni’s sought-for half-million is as much an imperative as any calling of the heart.
Roger Ringrose’s Dorbeval may be much dimmer at people than at money, but neither trait is culpable: his financial acuity is at the service of people he cares for. Max Digby and Fliss Walton as Poligni and Mme de Brienne have to ride more switchbacks of fortune and emotion than can comfortably be handled, and Sioned Jones as Mme Dorbeval has wonderfully expressive eyes. There is a happy ending of a sort, but the predictable deus ex machina does not by any means produce the expected resolution. Still, as the saying goes, money doesn’t buy happiness but it enables you to be unhappy in comfort.
http://www.ft.com/cms/s/397eaf4c-53c1-11db-8a2a-0000779e2340.html
The Stage Review
By Paul Vale
Set in Restoration France, three friends from university reunite and discover how each may help the other in their professional lives. Things might run smoothly until they realise that the women behind them are not without intrigues and devices of their own. Scribe’s tale survives remarkably well and as presented here, has all the charm and accessibility of an Ayckbourn middle-class comedy. Curtis admits that this adaptation attempts to retain the spirit of the piece rather than a surgical translation and coupled with tight direction from Robert Gillespie and spirited performances this work, from the most prolific playwright in history, proves a worthy showpiece from an often overlooked author.
Roger Ringrose wisely overplays the buffoonery as the jovial nouveau riche Dorbeval, readily dispensing advice on finance and matrimony to his two less successful friends. Max Digby is relatively sombre as the inconstant lover Poligni and Oliver Chopping is exuberant as the zealous artist, Olivier, although it is only by stretching the imagination greatly that one can believe these three were at college together. The ladies of the cast are much more restrained and the relationship between Sioned Jones as Madame Dorbeval and the delightful Fliss Walton as Madame de Brienne is both refreshing and wholly believable. Newcomer Bryony Nolan as the churlish coquette Hermione is delightfully over the top as this hysterical comic creation to match that of her guardian.
Curtis loving adaptation is a success, save a bizarre unsatisfactory ending, and certainly merits a further exploration of Scribe’s canon.
http://www.thestage.co.uk/reviews/review.php/14355/golden-opportunities
The Times Review
By Jeremy Kingston
Blessed with a playwright’s name for a playwright, the French dramatist Eugène Scribe is credited with having penned more than 400 plays, many of them swiftly turned into libretti for Verdi (Un Ballo in maschera), Rossini and other bright beacons of 19th-century opera. Though his work survives in the opera house, the spoken theatre knows it no more, despite brave attempts by the eminent critic Anthony Curtis to remind us of the qualities it must once have exhibited. His latest attempt is a version of the 1828 comedy Le Mariage d’argent, which takes a cool look at the get-rich society of the Bourbon Restoration, and the temptation it offered to get richer by marrying money.
Having to choose between love and lucre is a familiar predicament facing young heroes, and usually ends with a fond playwright blessing them with both. Scribe is altogether sharper here, and while one of the characters does indeed find himself in this happy position he is not the man whose ditherings are central to the plot. This unappealing individual is Poligni, formerly a dashing Napoleonic officer but now in serious need of funds. The love of his life married someone else, his debts have mounted, and finally he agrees to marry the wealthy ward of a friend who has made a mint at the Bourse.
This being a play, no sooner has he done so than his love returns from abroad, now widowed, and the future could be a garden of roses for both were it not that their author contrives to slam all the garden doors shut. Chance infidelities by other characters, chance misunderstandings — these are the contrivances that put the roses out of reach.
It is true that these upsets reveal Poligni’s unattractive nature, and I take it that Max Digby’s performance in Robert Gillespie’s production intends us to recognise this. But the process is confused by also presenting him as truly in love with his boyhood sweetheart — an attractive performance here by Fliss Walton. Actual wrongdoers — adulterous wife, swindler father — get away with their offences and, while this adds to the cynical, Balzacian tone, the character of Poligni lacks the depth and the dash that might carry the story home.
Along the way there is much to admire in Roger Ringrose’s shrewd and jolly millionaire, and Oliver Chopping’s impatient enthusiasm as a society painter, but as a dramatist Scribe would seem to need Verdi et al to give him life today.
http://entertainment.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,14936-2386096,00.html
Croydon Advertiser Review
By Diana Eccleston.
HANDS up who's heard of French dramatist Eugene Scribe. No, I hadn't either, which is a great pity since this man wrote more plays than anyone in history and, on the evidence of this modern translation, he certainly deserves something of the fame of his fellow countrymen Molière and Feydeau.
Since his retirement as the literary editor of the Financial Times, Anthony Curtis has been campaigning to get the work of Scribe better known in Britain. And he's done a champion job with this gutsy, fun-filled adaptation of Le Mariage d'Argent. It has left my mouth watering for more from the same mould and the sincere hope that this hugely enjoyable production will move elsewhere after its Croydon run - maybe even the West End, dare I suggest?
It's a change from the usual fare at the Warehouse, which is in the vanguard of modern experimental work. That said, even though this is a period comedy its very modernity of spirit is entirely in keeping with the theatre's ethos of extending boundaries and bringing new works to the attention of the public.
Golden Opportunities may be nearly 180 years old but it is certainly fresh to British audiences. I adored it for a variety of reasons. I loved its Frenchness, its articulate sense of fun, its deft character drawings, the girl-power of the women covering for one another, its relevant commentary about a cash-crazy society and its beautiful balance of justice. Love or money, those are the big issues here. And everyone gets exactly what they deserve: greed gets its just desserts and noble hearts are ultimately rewarded by love.
The comedy features Dorbeval, a rich broker, and his friends Poligni (who's short of cash) and Olivier (an artist who is starting to be successful). It transpires both Poligni and Olivier are in love with the same gorgeous girl but, when her aged husband dies, who will win her hand?
Roger Ringrose is an exuberant, hedonistic, wheeler-dealing Mr Fix-It as Dorbeval, whose good intentions get out of hand for the skint but greedy Poligni (Max Digby). Oliver Chopping is the exciting young artist Olivier and Fliss Walton is perfect as the radiantly attractive and pure-hearted widow Amelie.
http://iccroydon.icnetwork.co.uk/whatson/theatre/
Time Out Review
By Lucy Powell.
The works of the most prolific playwright in history, the aptly named Eugène Scribe, unfold with a vice-like, clockwork precision. Here, in one of a brain-addling 400 plays that the nineteenth-century Frenchman turned out, three students meet again after years of estrangement. One has become obscenely rich after investing in the stock market. One is an artist, sporting torn trousers, tousling his hair and painting his fingernails orange to prove it.
The third, Poligni, finds himself hanging uncomfortably and penuriously between the two stools of his former chums, lacking either a lucrative profession or an artistic talent. He’s equally suspended in terms of love, wherein lies the play.
Fat cat Dubois would have him marry for money, Olivier for love. The plot of this social comedy whirs into action when Poligni’s childhood sweetheart returns (penniless) from Russia just as an engagement to a wealthy heiress is within his grasp.
Robert Gillespie’s well-oiled production carries off the Wildean, absurdist comedy beautifully, and although the energy occasionally sags, impressive performances abound, particularly from Sioned Jones as Dubois’ not-quite-dutiful wife, and Roger Ringrose as the boorish, status obsessed oaf. But it’s hard to see why Gillespie felt the need to revive this moralistic, functional period drama so faithfully. Scribe’s play boasts a shockingly unrepentant conclusion, and his dialogue is equally accomplished and sardonic. But he spends so little time exploring the emotional life of his characters, and so much on the fabulously over-complicated intricacies of his plot, that the satisfaction on offer feels pressingly thin: the fleeting, unrevelatory pleasure of untangling a particularly tricky puzzle.
http://www.timeout.com/london/theatre/events/261938/golden_opportunities.html
The Guardian Review
Michael Billington
Wednesday October 4, 2006
French playwright Eugene Scribe is virtually forgotten. Yet, as both dramatist and opera librettist, he had a huge influence on 19th-century theatre: Ibsen directed 21 of his plays in Bergen. Watching Anthony Curtis's elegant translation of this 1828 piece, one's chief impression is of a hesitant moralist posing as a boulevard entertainer.
Poligni is an ex-Napoleonic officer on his uppers. His friend, Dorbeval, has a talent for making money, while his painter chum, Olivier, is the darling of the salon. But Poligni finds himself in a pickle. Should he marry the impecunious, widowed Mme de Brienne, to whom he has long been devoted, or Dorbeval's vacuous ward, who comes with a hefty dowry?
Like Noël Coward, Scribe hides a message under gift-wrapped froth. He implies that marrying for money leads only to a life of comfortable desolation. And any well-trained Marxist could find in the play a withering portrait of the Bourbon bourgeoisie who profited hugely from the new law of indemnity, allowing people to make inflated compensation claims for property lost during the revolution.
What stops Scribe being a first-rate artist is that he never follows the logic of his own argument: he administers a slap on the wrist where one craves explicit condemnation of corruption. And he is more interested in plot than character. There is a very good scene in which a love letter to Dorbeval's wife is altruistically claimed by Mme de Brienne as being addressed to her. But, while Scribe shows how this leaves Poligni devastated, he fails to explore the hollowness of the Dorbevals' marriage.
Allowing for the play's evasions, Robert Gillespie's production is suitably stylish. Claire Spooner's set, on a presumably modest budget, implies parquet-floored luxury. Max Digby plays Poligni, quite rightly, as a consummate ditherer, and there is sprightly support from Oliver Chopping as an open-hearted artist and Fliss Walton as the moderately merry widow. The final impression is of encountering a lost historical document, a 19th-century boulevard diversion with unexplored depths suggesting that Scribe, if more than a hack, was less than a genius.