Theatre: The Country Wife, Haymarket; Rent, Duke of York’s
A rarity at the Haymarket. A new production of a straight play. Such is the despair over the creeping musicalisation of the West End that this feels less like a review and more like a life-and-death prognosis on a stricken prince whose wellbeing has become an obsessive hobby among theatre critics and other intellectual pseuds. First the bad news. William Wycherley’s 332-year-old sex romp is about as entertaining as I would be if I were 332. The plot is dazzlingly crass. Horner, a self-adoring womaniser, returns home from a spell in France and spreads the rumour that he has lost his genitals. By thus winning the trust of London’s husbands the self-confessed castrato hopes to emulate the eunuchs of antiquity who operated as guardians and (if the right bits had survived their mutilation) as lovers to royal wives.
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