Power

Synopsis

I learn my lessons from the lips of the dying: at any moment they may come for us, knife scintillant in the starlight, assassin sick with fear. So act first. Identify the danger, disarm it, and destroy. Who invented The Sun King? What became of him? Nick Dear's witty play deals with the rise and fall of Nicolas Fouquet, chief financier to Louis XIV and creator of the chateau which inspired Versailles.

Our Review:

7 July 2003

The brief title of Nick Dear's new play Power contains the one quality that is, unfortunately, lacking in it. It has intrigue, humour, research, character and conviction as it opens a theatrical window onto a historical past; but there doesn't seem to be any particular urgency to why we're being told this story now.

Maybe it's sufficient that it's the theatrical equivalent of a historical page-turner, namely a scene-changer (there are 19 in all), to provide an entertaining enough canter through the machinations of the court of Louis XIV, 'The Sun King' of France.

Starting at the beginning of his reign in 1661, it follows him in both private and state matters. On the personal front, there are his tangled romantic liaisons, having an affair with his brother's wife (daughter of the executed Charles I of England) but then falling for her virginal maid when she's conscripted as a decoy. But the core of the drama concerns how he is forced to deal with a s...

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Latest User Review

USER: Whatsonstage.com (82.35.62.168) - 21 October 2003:

I was rather indifferent to this. Had a Black Adderish quality and Robert Lindsay was very strong, but it didn't really move me or make me think or anything a bit of a non event, for me at any rate....

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