Vanity Fair - Review

Are you going to Vanity Fair? You certainly should, for this production currently at the Royal Lyceum is tremendous fun and one of the wittiest shows seen at the theatre for a long time. Part burlesque, part pseudo early movie (complete with thumping piano to underline the action), the play is staged as though it were a piece of Victorian children’s theatre.
There is a tatty, flimsy curtain not quite covering the set, which announces title and author. There is a hotch potch of make do scenery – a ladder, a crooked proscenium, some cardboard buildings falling in upon themselves. And at the start the actors are a group of floppy puppets who gradually come to life to strut their hour (or two) upon the stage. For Thackeray, like Shakespeare, wants us to be aware that life is whimsical, life is farcical and this production, adapted by Declan Donnellan and directed by Tony Cownie, plays the story as farce.

Characters bump along in make shift carriages while trees walk slowly by them. Picture frames have a multi purpose use as windows, mirrors, portraits and easels. Hats – the bigger and more ludicrous the better - are used to establish identity. The great sprawling story of Thackeray’s novel has been encapsulated and contained within a series of vignettes and songs.

The cast are all called upon to undertake a multiplicity of parts, which they do with great verve and élan. (Special mention must be made of Antony Eden, who as well as playing a very lively George Osbourne, has a great bit part as a crying baby.) Sophia Linden is magnificent as the upwardly mobile adventuress Becky Sharp – Scarlet woman to the Victorians, go-getting WAG to us. The character of Amelia Sedley played by Kim Gerard is no doubt the virtuous one, but definitely soppy and not nearly so personable. Domestic foibles, rising and falling fortunes, and the plodding constancy of good old Dobbin (Simon Muller) are played out against the political background of the rise of Napoleon – another adventurer in the great vanity that is life.

At the end of the performance, the actors all collapse once more into their floppy state, thus visually giving us Thackeray’s own ending to his novel:

“Come, children, let us shut up the box and the puppets, for our play is played out”

Lyceum Theatre until 12^th of April.

For details of dates, relevant events and tickets, click here.

To book tickets, click here.

Evenings – Tuesday to Saturday 7.45pm

Matinees – 19, 22, 26 and 29^th March, 5^th April 2.30pm

Box Office 0131 248 4949