The Misanthrope

She is driving Damian Lewis’ splendidly angry playwright Alceste to distraction, though it’s oddly hard to detect any sexual obsession in his infatuation. Lewis lays about him with a bracing bile and candour only to find himself caught up in the very deceit he abhors. He’s in the wrong business if he thinks truth-telling is going to make any difference.

Crimp preserves the five act shape, and his rhyming doggerel “feels” like Moliere even though the actual translation isn’t a patch on Tony Harrison’s for the National – with Alec McCowen and Diana Rigg sparring, unforgettably – or Richard Wilbur’s. And Hildegard Bechtler’s monumental drawing room of swags and gilded furniture, beautifully lit by Peter Mumford, has the right broken down classical atmosphere.

Crimp was certainly prophetic in narrowing the play down to a showbiz satire. His creepy critic Covington, played with hilarious boom and smarminess by Tim McMullan, has buttoned up his barathea blazer over a pair of torn, blanched jeans while fingering the dread play in his briefcase; unlike Oronte’s poem in Moliere, though, the play when it comes, while obviously inept, is not really dreadful or funny enough.

Other soft targets are Tara Fitzgerald’s intense, bespectacled acting teacher, Nicholas Le Prevost’s back-stabbing agent and Kelly Price’s devious journalist who’s betraying confidences at every turn. Dominic Rowan is sadly under-parted as Alceste’s friend, and Chuk Iwuji’s florid camp actor Julian is teeming with spiteful energy.