Ring Around the Moon
byJean Anouilh, adapted by Christopher Fry
State Theatre Company
Playhouse, December 1989.
The State Theatre Company has closed shop for the year with Rodney Fisher’s production of Anouilh’s L’Invitation au Chateau, better known, having been turned over-easy by Christopher Fry, as Ring Around the Moon. Written in 1947 it was first presented to English audiences in 1950 by Peter Brook . He called it a “charade with music” and its enormous success, it has been suggested, was because it provided the kind of frothy glamour which was starkly absent in ration book Britain. That may also account for the show’s revival last year at the Chichester Festival -as Margaret Hilda tries to poll-tax most of her constituency further into cheerless penury. Whatever the reason, the inclusion of this play in an Australian theatre season is at best quaint and at worst fatuous.
Anouilh divided many of his works into Pieces Noires and Pieces Roses but those like Ring Around the Moon, in seeking to blend fantasy with social commentary, end up being Pieces which are a sort of cack colour. As a result the play is neither Shaw nor Noel Coward and of all the plays that might be exhumed from the crypt Ring Around the Moon seems an odd choice.
In his fulsome programme notes Rodney Fisher quotes the comment that Anouilh is the master of the art of saying angry things in pretty words. But this production with its pretty design and pretty performances takes nearly three hours to say pretty well nothing at all. The story line, dignified by association with Plautus and Shakespeare, has twin brothers Hugo and Frederic, two peas from very different pods vying for suitors at the chateau of their aunt, Mme Desmermortes. Hugo has arranged a ball and hired Isabelle, a young dancer in a Chanel dress to play Cinderella and drive the sulky daughters of the rich and nouveau into a jealous frenzy. He’s bored you see, having all that money and leisure and No Values. This is Europe in post-War carpetbaggery where Polish emigres like the financier Messeschmann, having survived the death camps, are now fulfilling their Zionist destiny on the Stock Exchange. Not only is this play dated but in its stereotyping it doesn’t seem to mind a bit of anti-Semitism.
After a lot of ropey old intrigue which makes Sardou look post-modernist, Hugo sees the error of his ways and Isabelle teaches Messechmann that money can’t buy you love. After tearing up a wheelbarrow full of banknotes, Messechmann returns to Cracow to be a happy little bespoke tailor again . After all,he wasn’t born to be in Chateau Society like Hugo’s brill set or to be turned into a princess like Isabelle. There are some twisting ironies and a few smart lines but this is the gist of it I’m giving you .
The trouble with this production is that it represents a formidable amount of theatrical ability -director Rodney Fisher and a cast including Hugo Weaving , valiant in not one but two silly roles, Pat Evison as the Aunt, Rhys McConnochie as Messerchmann (not even he can rally when he’s piped from the stage to the strains of “If I were a Rich Man) and others including Vanessa Downing, Heather Mitchell and Edwin Hodgeman. All struggle against the laborious plot and the fustiness of the ideas none of which are redeemed by Anouilh and Fry’s sub-Shavian aphorisms.
As if to repeat the success of Private Lives in which Weaving, Downing and Mitchell all appeared, Fisher and designer Roger Kirk have produced a set just slightly smaller than the Crystal Palace and Nigel Levings has lit it like a Christmas cake. Unfortunately, the sumptuous visuals only compound the impression of a great deal of effort for a piece of piffle. No wonder John Gaden, as Josue the meandering butler spends most of his time shrugging at the audience.
It is no crime to offer entertainment to the theatre audience and many have enjoyed this production. But why not give us confection with contemporary appeal instead of a work that dithers so languidly with such reactionary ideas. As we can expect with State, the production values are high. But the value of the production is another matter -on that count, Ring Around the Moon is a zero.
“Out of Orbit” The Adelaide Review, No.71, January, 1990, p.32.