I am very excited at having been able to secure tickets to all 3 shows in the Donmar's spring season, with Nick Payne's new Elegy something I'm sure I'll enjoy.
First up was the mysterious Welcome Back, Captain Fox!; a translation of a french play, based on the true story of an amnesiac soldier, back from being lost in a foreign prison, with no memory of home or family, and sufficiently aged to not be immediately recognizable to family. I had never heard of the original, and have no idea as to whether it constitutes such a silly and broad comedy as this new version.
In this version, the action has been (somewhat inexplicably) moved to a long hot summer in 1950's Long Island. The setting, with it's oppressive, prickly, heat and the entitled langour of the characters, evokes Eugene O'Neill, and the play makes this joke itself in a particularly knowing aside. However the tone and script could not be more different, with existential misery pushed aside in favour of sitcom stylings and caricatured accents.
The antagonist, Gene, is delivered to the house of the Fox's, in the wealthy Hamptons, by the scheming DuPont DuFort's, an odious couple reminiscent of Thenardier and wife. Mrs DuPont DuFort (last time I'm writing that, let's say dPdF) has 'found' Gene in an asylum in New Jersey, and has assembled a short list of 24 families missing lost boys from WW2, based on his Long Island accent and clear 'good breeding'. Gene has no memories from before his capture by the Nazi's. Mrs dPdF has her hopes set on the Fox's being his real family, seeing the story, of her reuniting the son of a wealthy family, as her chance to elevate herself socially. Her weaselish husband just wants her to stop fussing over the 'nutjob' they have driven across the whole state for the rendezvous. They are played with gleeful uncouth, strictly for laughs, as petty and middle class idiots. I was surprised to see the play immediately take this jocular tone; this was clearly to be no sensitive exploration of Gene's condition.
What ensues is a delicate back-and-forth between the frightened and confused Gene and his 'family'. The matriarchal Mrs Fox immediately recognizes him as her son, his dull and reserved brother George is not sure, the flirtatious maid Juliette is delighted to have the 'young master' back, and George's sotted wife Val is unsettled at the thought of "Jack's" return. It emerges that Jack Fox was not a terribly nice young man; sleeping with the maid and running up gambling debts that have crippled the family since his 'death'. Gene, whilst delighted at the thought of 'family' and the Fox's easy and wealthy lifestyle, is disoriented by the thought that he might have been a 'bad' man in his past life, and Jack's philandering and boorish ways (he is a keen hunter) are clearly offputting. These exchanges, despite the psychological bent, are played as a set of sketches - the uncertain and confused Gene confronted with a series of caricatures - the thoughtful and proud black butler, the skittish and libidinous young maid, the stiff and clottish elder brother, the narcissist mother and, most interestingly, the breathless and bored sister-in-law, Val. Played by an unrecognizable Fenella Woolgar, she is two parts Curley's wife and one part Edina Monsoon. It transpires that Val and Jack had been conducting an affair before he left for war, and her current reduced state, of being constantly two gin's ahead in the family home, in a passionless marriage, would be pitiable where she not such a rude and flighty character. The whole family are unveiled to be something of a bunch of gargoyles, and whether or not their madness was the cause or symptom of Jack's story, Gene begins to wonder whether he's really escaped the asylum at all...
The play escalates as many of the other 24 families get wind of the story and come seeking Gene as their own son, forcing him to make a decision between the wealth and madness of the Fox household, or the penury and normality of another family. This is played, like the rest of the play as a farce, and, to my view, not a particularly amusing one. None of the character's are likeable or redeemable, and the lines aren't waspish enough to make up for the sneers with which they are delivered.
I saw the play on a preview night, and it's possible that with some snappier comic timing that the laughs will flow more freely. More likely, I reckon, is that it will stand as an interesting example of a brave writer trying to create a modern homage to the out-of-fashion farce. Ultimately, I think Captain Fox succeeds in capturing the grotesque and the silliness of those productions, but not the magic.
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