Mark Ravenhill’s take on Voltaire’s Candide

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.