The Beaux' Stratagem

What. A. Show.

Last night, we watched The Beaux' Stratagem at the National Theatre.  I could not stop laughing the entire time.  I may be a little biased because this play was the one that I analyzed in our pre-departure sessions, but this was the best show that we have seen thus far in London.  It was awesome to see this already outrageous story played out in an even more outrageous way on the stage.  The acting was fantastic and brought out the comedy in the language in every way possible.  Even Scrub, a filler character in the text, was absolutely hilarious on stage.  Though they steered away from the script just a bit, the modernization of what direction they went and the music they chose was just fantastic. 

One element of the scenic design that I thought made the show even more tremendous was the lighting.  I loved the way that even though the set (for the most part) was the same for the Inn and Lady Bountiful's house, they used different brightness and color of light to help distinguish between the two.  The Inn was much more dimly lit in a yellow light while Lady Bountiful's house was lit in bright white light.  Even when the scene was not switching from one place to the other, the way the lights so subtly dimmed in and out was wonderful.  The lights definitely directed the eyes of the audience in a play where characters were performing on three different levels with multiple doorways.  It made the play easy to follow and made the transitions seamless.

The lighting especially added to the comedy of the play when the musicians would enter the scene on the third level of the set.  A single musician would enter with their instrument, and the lighting would fade in on them, followed by enormous laughter from the audience.  Yes, the language of the play was funny, but those scenes would not have been near as funny if the single musician had not be singled out by the light.  

One other thing I caught with the lights was that both the beginning and end of the show were done the exact same way.  The first light we saw was a single beam from directly above the stage that showed a violinist at the very top of the set.  At the end of the show, we saw the same single beam of light from directly above shining down on the same violinist as she played by herself.  The play opened with a fade in of the light and closed with it fading out.  It was a great way to end the play, and I really hope more people caught it than me. 

I would recommend that performance of The Beaux' Stratagem to anyone.