Synopsis Comedy about a '70s London love triangle. Dave has returned home. The locks have been changed. His furniture's gone and Anne is living with another man. And so the epic love-triangle begins...Christopher Hampton's play brings together loyalty and desire, revenge and betrayal in a darkly comic mix. Can love conquer all or is 'real life' just too powerful.
After a delayed press night and much tabloid speculation about whether the Doctor Who star would make it to the stage after missing two preview performances due to illness, Billie Piper (pictured) made her West End debut last night (8 March 2007, previews from 20 February) in Christopher Hampton’s Treats at the Garrick, in an opening night rescheduled from 28 February (See News, 23 Feb 2007).
When Ann (Piper) loses her egotistical and violent ex-boyfriend Dave (Kris Marshall), she tries to rebuild her shattered confidence by forming a rebound relationship with Patrick (Laurence Boswell – Piper’s real-life boyfriend), the office bore. All is going as expected until Dave returns on a macho mission to try and win her back. Hampton’s 1976 three-hander, which has been updated to 21st-century London, is directed by Laurence Boswell and produced by Bill Kenwright.
Opening night critics said Piper gave as good as she gets in a “two-dimensional” role that doesn’t give the actress much scope. While some thought she was “really rather good”, others found her bland and cold, though they blamed the script rather than actress. They were impressed with Marshall’s macho Dave, and enjoyed Fox’s geeky portrayal of the new love interest. However, while they found the premise of the love triangle interesting and praised Hampton’s clever use of language and structure, most critics felt the play was slightly dated and the characters lacked depth.
Michael Coveney on Whatsonstage.com (4 stars) - “Laurence Boswell’s production is a bit of a discovery…. Billie Piper is really rather good…. Hampton has re-energised his stark, moral fable of dangerous liaisons…. This production restores the pain and pleasure of Hampton’s original as a tart and truculent comedy…. Piper is suspended between the old boyfriend and the new boredom. One could possibly read into this the media-led frenzy about Billie’s supposed oscillation between ex-husband and good chum Chris Evans and her new inamorata, Laurence Fox, her on-stage Patrick. This off-stage drama has undoubtedly fuelled the on-stage comedy, and all to the good. Late in the play, which is pleasantly short at just under two hours including a long interval, Kris Marshall’s splendidly supercilious Dave remarks that Patrick always looked like someone who’s just stepped into an empty lift shaft. The comment gets the right laugh because Fox has played for that gag all evening…. The play might now be reassessed as Hampton’s comic masterpiece. And Piper manages to be both a compellingly attractive but dramatically disastrous siren, and an intelligent assessor of her sexual options. She’s very good indeed. And another excellent play is restored.”
Nicholas de Jongh in the Evening Standard (4 stars) – “This chilling, black comedy of sexual manners by Christopher Hampton deals with far more than the eternal triangle of two middle-class chaps coming to grief and violence over the body of a sexy girl. Laurence Boswell's production makes the problem as clear as a psychotherapist's court report, thanks to the power with which Billie Piper, in an impressive West End debut of genuine emotional power, and dynamic Kris Marshall, together with Laurence Fox's over-doltish man in the middle, act out their love-relations…. The language sounds distinctly Seventies formal, while Jeremy Herbert's design offers a mystifying mix of objects from the Seventies and 2007…. Wherever we are, though, a timeless pattern of sexual behaviour is at once elaborated…. The charismatic Marshall, a natural actor right down to his toenails, draws the comic maximum from Dave's shamelessness and revels in the man's unspeakable egotism, while Fox's Patrick looks on in dumbfounded, long-suffering passivity…. Up to the interval, Treats rates as a superficial and trivial comedy of manners…. Hampton has, though, prepared his ground with psychological astuteness for the devastating second act.”
Michael Billington in the Guardian (3 stars) – “One suspects the off-stage dramas were more than a match for anything that takes place in this capable revival of Christopher Hampton's diagrammatically neat but strangely hermetic 1976 play…. My problem in 1976 was that I couldn't believe in Ann's restricted possibilities: why, in the age of women's lib, was she forced to choose between an amiable wimp and a destructive neurotic? And, by updating the action to the present, Hampton makes her dilemma even less credible.… Pre-empting Pinter's Betrayal, which appeared two years later, Hampton suggests the strongest bond in the play is really between the two men. In one astutely observed scene he shows how Dave, in picking over his failed relationship with Ann, turns to Patrick for instinctive support…. But it seems a curiously airless play; and, in Laurence Boswell's production, one is left admiring the dexterity of the three performers. Clearly the main focus is on Ms Piper and she intelligently suggests hidden reserves of strength inside the indecisive Ann…. Piper has poise and presence on stage…. Kris Marshall also implies, in moments of solitude, that there are redeeming private insecurities to the repulsive Dave. But the most intriguing performance comes from Laurence Fox who lends the hapless Patrick a gangling ineffectualness that makes it impossible for him to extract a key from its ring. We all love a loser and Fox has a dithering helplessness that suggests he would make a wonderful Konstantin in The Seagull.”
Alice Jones in the Independent – “Rarely has a leading lady caused so much drama before even stepping on stage…. one fully expected one of theatreland's overworked understudies to appear in her place. But, as the lid lifted off Jeremy Herbert's giant blue-and-yellow present of a set, there was the distinctive blonde actress calmly sitting on a beige Ikea sofa….. Somewhere along the way this promising premise seems to have been boiled down to a rehashing of the classic problem-page dilemma - should Ann stay with the guy who treats her well but is ‘too nice’ or go with the alluring, but abusive, bad boy?... In the first half she barely utters 20 lines and by the end of the play we have no idea of what makes her tick. Faced with this two-dimensional character, Piper finds it hard to shine. While watchable enough, she spends much of the play pulling the same disapproving face. As bully-boy Dave, Marshall has a good sense of comedy, which makes his dark side all the more menacing. As the ‘bore of international reputation’ Fox gives a performance which is amusing and touching. Both are given the best lines but they are absurd extremes and it's hard to see why Ann would want anything to do with either of them. All three actors have come to the West End from higher profile television roles. What a shame then that they have ended up in the closest theatre gets to soap opera.”
Charles Spencer in the Daily Telegraph – “There has been much feverish press speculation about the delayed press night of this production…. Could I hazard the suggestion that the play itself might have made her sick? In its mixture of self-regarding cleverness and tendentious sexual politics Treats takes some beating….. Theatre is often at its best when exploring the dark and disastrous promptings of Eros…. what infuriates me is that while the two men in Ann’s life… witter on interminably, Hampton offers virtually no clue into what makes his heroine tick…. Is it just that she and Dave have great sex together? Well it might be, but unfortunately neither Hampton’s text nor Laurence Boswell’s flaccid production achieve the faintest frisson of erotic desire. Or is Hampton suggesting… some women actually like to be slapped about a bit?... if you are going to take such a provocative view, should you not at least have the courtesy to give the woman in question a chance to explain herself? All poor Ann gets to do is sob a lot and then smile fetchingly at her brutish partner…. Hampton is excellent at epigrammatic elegance… and this piece is structured with a clever mathematical precision….. But when it comes to… the heart, Hampton is… a dead loss…. Marshall exudes an edgy sense of danger as Dave, Fox… has some amusingly geeky moments as Patrick. But this is a mechanical and soulless little play that reminds us why Hampton has never quite made it into the premier league of British dramatists.”
Quentin Letts in the Daily Mail – “Billie did fine in her West End debut last night. She turned up… she remembered her lines, moved fluently, took off her shirt at one point and looked jolly pretty. She even broke down into a convincing puddle of tears.… Yes, we can count this launch as an adequate success. But the play itself… is a slender work… neatly symmetrical, tightly spun but hardly an earth mover…. Fox mugs up the gormlessness of his character to the full… Marshall’s Dave is sexier than dull Patrick but, being a cocaine snorter with violent inclinations, he is more dangerous. Ann has to decide which she prefers. Theatrical purposes demand a pretty obvious answer…. This production is set in 21st century London… bad idea. Without the 1970s political context the play becomes little more than a workman like soap opera…. The art of the actor is to inhabit different lives and to create personas. Billie may have poshed up her accent last night but she was, I’m afraid, seldom more than Billie. I never felt I was watching Ann. Don’t blame her. Blame the men in the background pulling the strings.”
As a comedy of modern sexual mores in a triangular arrangement, Christopher Hampton’s Treats bears comparison with Noel Coward’s Design for Living or Patrick Marber’s Closer. Historically, it bisects both plays, dating from 1976 but never really punching its weight in either the playwright’s oeuvre or the public esteem.
Laurence Boswell’s production is a bit of a discovery and has taken me by surprise on several counts. Billie Piper is really rather good as the assailed and mixed-up Ann, the character Hampton conceived as a reaction to Ibsen’s Nora in A Doll’s House (a play he translated in the early 1970s): she goes out, slams the door, but comes back.
And in slightly adjusting his text to allow the ghastly, coke-snorting, womanising journalist Dave – he’s “had” 42 women during his two years of bullying and despising Ann - to be on leave from duty in Basra rather than Beirut (staying in the Dorchester, not the Savoy), Hampton has re-energised his stark, moral fable of dangerous liaisons.
One can now see how he wanted to reclaim that brilliant 1985 adaptation of the French epistolary drama for his own generation. The original Treats at the Royal Court looked sadly out of its theatrical time. The Hampstead version in 1989 was just dull. This production restores the pain and pleasure of Hampton’s original as a tart and truculent comedy.
The little black book of available afternoon dates is replaced by a Blackberry, and Kate Adie and the demonstration in Tiananmen Square feature as political reference points. But the musical back-ups are the glorious same, from Bruckner’s fourth symphony to the Beach Boys’ “Good Vibrations,” Bob Dylan’s “Nashville Skyline” and the Shirelles’ “Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?”
Piper is suspended between the old boyfriend and the new boredom. One could possibly read into this the media-led frenzy about Billie’s supposed oscillation between ex-husband and good chum Chris Evans and her new inamorata, Laurence Fox, her on-stage Patrick. This off-stage drama has undoubtedly fuelled the on-stage comedy, and all to the good.
Late in the play, which is pleasantly short at just under two hours including a long interval, Kris Marshall’s splendidly supercilious Dave remarks that Patrick always looked like someone who’s just stepped into an empty lift shaft. The comment gets the right laugh because Fox has played for that gag all evening and the choice Ann must make – is it just about sex appeal? -- will inform the strange, dying fall of the play’s end.
The violence of the opening scene, where Dave punches Patrick on the nose and calmly enquires – “Any messages?” -- is typical of a show that mixes good and bad behaviour like cocktail ingredients. How people treat each other partly explains the title; and so does the idea that going to bed with a former girlfriend for five minutes constitutes “just a little treat”.
The play might now be reassessed as Hampton’s comic masterpiece. And Piper manages to be both a compellingly attractive but dramatically disastrous siren, and an intelligent assessor of her sexual options. She’s very good indeed. And another excellent play is restored.
The very title raises expectations and for me it was a disappointing treat.
Unlike The Dorchester, now showing at the Jermyn Street theatre.
Think of The Producers and here’s another romp through Hitler’s Germaneee. Except that it all takes place within one room of London’s Dorchester Hotel during the war and the Nazis have already goosestepped their way down Whitehall.
Hitler admirers the Duke and Duchess of Windsor are preparing themselves to become titular heads of state, although beneath the preening lurks insecurity. German foreign minister Von Ribbentrop tells them it would be unwise to take their incontinent dog for a quick walkies down Park Lane. Are they under house (hotel) arrest?
And what is the darling of theatreland, Noel Coward, really up to as he breaks off from his sniping bon mots to lock the waiter in a cupboard?
Yes, it’s all a farce played out with crispness of a Heil Hitler salute which only comes to a stutter when the waiter turns out to be B-b-b-bertie, King George VI, disguised in nothing more than a detachable Hitler moustache, trying to thwart his brother’s ambitions.
Tim Faulkner gives a nicely understated, louche performance as the Duke of Windsor, who neither looks (nor thankfully sounds like) Edward Fox. Toni Kanal as Wallis alternates between vamp and vampire as she demands £20m as the price for her loyalty to the Third Reich. Noel (Matthew Phillips) is the manipulative power behind the throne, by turns beguilingly camp and menacing, with Bertie (Alec Walters) shedding his stutter along with the moustache as events reach their denouement.
But not before Matthew Wynn (Ribbentrop) gives one of the most surreal performances of the evening. Picture ‘pub landlord’ Al Murray in jackboots lying on a couch playing Vivienne Lee in Gone with the Wind with a Teutonic/southern belle accent.
A couple of (mercifully brief) scenes are just too silly, even for a farce (brolly fencing and the Duke of Windsor appearing with bagpipes). Scrap these and The Dorchester deserves a showing beyond ‘the fringe’ of Jermyn Street’s small basement venue.
John Bingham
- john bingham
19 Nov 07
This is a very slight play. Anne (played by Billie Piper) strikes me as incredible but, if that's wrong, it is Hampton's fault for failing to give the character anything meaningful to say. As for the acting, Kris Marshall is compelling. However, I could only hear about 1 word in 5 from Billie Piper and Laurence Fox: clearly, no-one has bothered to tell them that acting in the theatre requires projection. - fred
11 Apr 07
Treats received generally good reviews from the critics, the most notable exception being the Telegraph. As usual I find myself more in agreement with Charles Spencer; the direction is stodgy but the main culprit is writer Christopher Hampton. Much of the writing seems lime an attempt to show off, epigrams instead of believable dialogue, particularly for the male characters, although it might have helped if Kris Marshall and Laurence Fox switched roles. I have not been impresssed by Billie Piper's TV acting but here she is the best of an admittedly average bunch, but sadly she has been saddled with an absurd character. It beggars belief that an attractive and apparently intelligent woman would make such appalling choices. For Hampton to claim that Treats could be a feminist play is laughable but in that chauvinistic spirit, one request: if Billie Piper is to take her top off could she at least face the audience - why should it be just Daniel Radcliffe's fans who get all the fun? David Baxter (15.3.07) - David Baxter
19 Mar 07
Loved Hampton's play and can't understand why some critics don't - it seems to me that many haven't understood the social and political bravery of a play that actually seemed deeply feminist both to me and to my girlfriend. There are many women with low self-esteem who would allow themselves to be treated as badly as Billie's character. Coveney's review is an intelligent, well argued review that understands what the production is. Only thing is that I felt the production might have been improved by shortening some of the pauses, although I saw an early preview so it may have tightened up. - Karl Robinson
09 Mar 07
A somewhat slight piece - nowhere near Christopher Hampton's best. Good performances, but a mediocre evening overall. Gareth - Gareth James
Opened on 24 Apr 1889, funded by W.S. Gilbert. 675 seats. Bought from Andrew Lloyd Webber and now owned by Broadway producer Max Weitzenhoffer and Nica Burns.Society of London Theatre member.
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