Ah yes, Candide, the adventures of an innocent abroad in ‘the best of all possible worlds’, as philosophers of the 18th century liked to insist. Voltaire’s satirical demolition of the higher nonsense of his age, and of the powers of Church and state who propped themselves up with it. A novel of 1759 written, at least in part, as an outraged response to those who’d insisted that the earthquake that had razed Lisbon to the ground four years earlier was all part of God’s plan for the good of mankind. Two centuries later, a brilliant musical by Leonard Bernstein. And now, a new play by Mark Ravenhill, mitigating the theft of the title by adding ‘inspired by Voltaire’.
‘Inspired’ turns out to be the right word. For Ravenhill has written a cracker of a play that redirects Voltaire’s mockery against the phoney hopes keeping so much of the world afloat (just) today. There’s no shortage of good journalists exposing the vacuity of the Good News, but we need the artful scalpels of the cartoonist and the satirist to cut to the quick. No better weapon than laughter, and the Swan was awash with it on the first night. Voltaire would have been hoping for tears too, but he can’t have it all. This would also apply to the half-hearted musical numbers, though Lyndsey Turner’s direction is otherwise perfectly in tune with the play.
In an evening full of surprises, Ravenhill begins in the bewigged high society of Voltaire’s time with the old gambit of a ‘play within a play’. Matthew Needham’s lankily disgruntled Candide has taken to his bed to escape the amorous attentions of his host, the Countess. He’s rudely awoken to witness the performance of a play which the Countess hopes will flatter and win him round.
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