Under the Doctor

“The best liar is he who makes the smallest amount go the longest way.” So
said Samuel Butler, author of Erewhon, although the sentiment might
have fallen from Peter Tilbury‘s lips, the playwright of this slight, but
undoubtedly funny, nouveau French farce.

Indeed, Tilbury’s skill is to stretch the ubiquitous deception, infidelity,
and art of cover-up to fill two 45-minute acts. Plotting is his strong
point; dialogue is not – at least on this evidence.

Reliant on a fair measure of coarse language, and lines that are often more
functional than sparkling, Tilbury’s tale commences with Dr Jean-Pierre
Moulineaux’s Peter Davison fib about what he was doing the previous
night – having illicit fun with newly married Suzanne Aubin Emma Pike –
rather than tending to Marcel Bassinet Robert Swann, an angry sort who
ends up being fatally caught in the bad doctor’s machinations.

To every master there must be a faithful, and flexible, servant. In this
case, it is Etienne, played with a little too much nonchalance by Anton
Rodgers. Etienne is the habitual amanuensis, and he espouses an ironic and
self-conscious view of his servile status. Liberal bribes grease his
wheels, however, and once moneyed by his superiors, he forms the centre of a
growing intrigue, one that involves young Gustave Bassinet Andrew Bone,
Moulineaux’s mother-in-law Brigitte Aigreville Harriet Thorpe, and the
politely predatory Anatole Aubin Hal Fowler, amongst others.

Nor is Etienne alone in spinning a web. The doctor’s philandering prompts
much of the cunning. A second look at his surname reveals his essentially
‘mixing’ nature.

One player untouched by deceit is Jean-Pierre’s virtuous wife Yvonne
Polly Maberly, but even she ends up compromising her values as adulterous
and marital matters reach a crisis – so to speak

James Merifield‘s quality set and costumes complement each other, in that
they share an angular pattern found not only on the walls, floor and
furniture, but also, in a witty touch, upon Suzanne’s stockings and
Moulineaux’s boxer shorts.

The pride of the stage properties is the ‘aortic dilator’. It’s a fabulous
concoction of springs, wheels and saws on wheels used for Moulineaux’s
medical fabrications.

Director Fiona Laird handles Tilbury’s effervescent tale, one that echoes
La Ronde in its sexual linkages, with suitable briskness.

Paul B Cohen