Stage-to-screen review: Masks and Faces, or,Before and Behind the Curtain

The Finborough has held off on reopening for live performances until next month due to the added challenges faced by a venue of its size; but not having any intention of being forgotten until then, it's continuing with the online offerings. This time it's the unlikely pairing of Restoration Comedy with Zoom calls with, as part of the Kensington and Chelsea Festival, the rediscovery of Charles Reade and Tom Taylor's Masks and Faces, or, Before and Behind the Curtain. It's fair to say I approached this one cautiously: I've enjoyed Restoration Comedy before but usually it takes quite a lot of work from a production for me to like it. Most of the time we see people in the usual ridiculous outfits and wigs blandly exchanging lines that were very funny at the time but... not so much now. So in a format that just relies on the lines and the actors' faces, with no chance of physical interaction with each other, let alone the audience, I didn't expect much. So what a pleasant surprise for Matthew Iliffe's production to add Masks and Faces to the list of "where has this been hiding all these years?" Finborough rediscoveries.

Before anyone stages the play as-is, I should say there's a chance Iliffe has done some judicious editing, because it comes in at just 100 minutes, short for the genre. Then again maybe not, maybe Reade and Taylor were just taking their own advice, from the numerous lines making digs at over-long plays. Because this is a play that's very much about the world of theatre itself, and the peculiarly contradictory levels of respect afforded to the early star actresses - in many ways the precursors to modern celebrities with armies of adoring fans, they often became mistresses of wealthy nobles, meaning outside of the theatrical world they're treated as little more than prostitutes. Peg Woffington (Amy McAllister) is the latest big name, and while many men have courted her, the only one who's tempted her is Ernest Vane (Will Kerr,) who she hopes might actually make her a respectable wife rather than a mistress. But Vane's duplicitous friend Pomander (Alexander Knox) has a plan to put her off him. And while his motives are selfish he does have a point: Vane won't make Peg his wife because he already has one, Mabel (Sophie Melville,) whom he's left in the countryside and who turns up unexpectedly.

Reade and Taylor throw in a bit of snark about how their own profession is treated, in the form of Triplet (Matthew Ashforde,) a starving actor/artist/playwright whose tragedies get returned to him unread, and who ends up an unwittingly crucial cog in all the plots. Triplet, his po-faced and self-loathing wife (Anne Odeke) and starving children are such an exaggerated picture of misery they seem like a Dickens parody: And since, although set a century earlier and in the style of that time, the play actually dates from Charles Dickens' hayday in 1852, they probably are. There's the usual coterie of ghastly hangers-on fawning and criticising the lead characters, and the Finborough have come up with the gimmick of casting actual theatre critics Michael Billington and Fiona Mountford as the critics Snarl and Soaper. Fortunately it's not the kind of stunt casting that detracts too much, as these aren't among the best characters in the first place.

The central characters are a funnier bunch though, and perhaps because so much of the play is about making fun of theatre and the Restoration style itself, rather than whatever was topical, it seems to have stood the test of time better than many others I've seen. I certainly laughed out loud more at this than at many dusty, live Restoration productions, because there's a decent amount of funny lines enthusiastically delivered (as well as the odd bonkers plot twist, like Peg sitting in a picture frame pretending to be her own portrait.) Peg herself is also one of those characters you really get behind: Not just witty and inventive, but genuinely kind, as witnessed by the effort she goes to to rescue Triplet and his family from poverty without seeming to offer charity. All in all, an unlikely candidate to work as a Zoom play proves a surprise hit.

Masks and Faces, or, Before and Behind the Curtain by Charles Reade and Tom Taylor is available until the 25th of August on the Finborough Theatre's YouTube channel.

Running time: 1 hour 40 minutes.