THREE STARS

An understandable ‘response’ to Voltaire’s picaresque novel Candide might be to follow the advice of its very last words and take up gardening. That of Mark Ravenhill, the Playwright in Residence with the Royal Shakespeare Company at Stratford, was — understandable in the circumstances — to fashion a play out of it. It’s rather a good play, if far from the best possible of all plays. For one thing, it is long-winded; though it lasts less than two hours, without interval, time sometimes drags slowly.

Perhaps a little confusingly, the title remains the same, suggesting that this is an adaptation of the original. To begin with, at least, that is what it appears to be as we watch the adventures of Candide and his irrespressibly optimistic tutor Pangloss (Ian Redford) performed by a group of actors for the entertainment and instruction of the young man himself, who is played with a suitable wide-eyed innocence by Matthew Needham.

The curious conceit here is that a rehearsal of his earlier activities will assist his aristocratic admirer, the Countess (Ishia Bennison) in her ambition to bed the boy. Certainly, it results in some rich comedy, with Pirendellian irruptions on to the stage by Candide, convinced that the actors are the real-life people he knew.

The tone of the piece alters abruptly when the action shifts to the present day and a stylish (all black and mirrors) country hotel. Here an 18th birthday party girl, Sophie (Sarah Ridgeway), blasts to death members of her family in a fury over her elders’ attitude to the world’s coming ecological disaster (the play is emphatically not one for global-warming-deniers).

The catatrophe provides a rich source of material for a ‘misery memoir’ by Sophie’s surviving mother (Katy Stephens). In the play’s funniest episode she is seen discussing its transformation into a film with impossibly trendy director Tim (John Hopkins) and her ‘narrative therapist’ Hannah (Ishia Bennison again).

After a further return to Voltaire and Candide’s adventures in Eldorado, we end the future and a visit to the Pangloss Institute, with its aim of “optimism for all”.