Theatre review: Infamous

For a small studio theatre, albeit a very central one, Jermyn Street Theatre gets to premiere new work by some well-known playwrights; although on recent form there does seem to be a reason these particular works don't find a more mainstream home. The latest is April De Angelis, whose Infamous is a weirdly unenthusiastic look at Georgian celebrity (and regular Blackadder punchline) Emma Hamilton. We first meet Emma (Rose Quentin) in 1798, the young wife of the septuagenarian ambassador to Naples. A former prostitute who climbed the social ladder as mistress to various powerful men, she's already achieved some notoriety as a close friend of the Neapolitan royals, whose influence makes her husband favour them over his own country's interests. But it's nothing compared to the infamy she's got planned.

The injured war hero Admiral Nelson is about to visit Naples, and Emma plans to invite him to stay so she can "nurse" him back to health. Their subsequent affair became what Lady Hamilton was best remembered for.

She confides in her mother, Mrs Cadogan (Caroline Quentin,) who tries and fails to impart some wisdom to her about how success built on notoriety risks a great fall, especially for a woman, especially at that time. In the second act we see that fall as, after Nelson's death, Emma has been more or less exiled to Calais to starve among the people her late lover had humiliated in battle.

Quentin Sr is now Emma and Jr plays her daughter with Nelson, Horatia - thanks to a convoluted legal arrangement in a pointless attempt to preserve his honour, she was officially Nelson's "adopted" daughter and Emma her appointed guardian, and the play asks us to believe Horatia was such a thundering simpleton the truth never occurred to her until after her mother's death. Despite her fall from grace Emma hasn't lost her belief in herself as the woman who can charm half of Europe, and believes entertaining the locals with the quasi-erotic classical "Attitudes" she struck in her youth will still be their salvation.

There's clearly more to Emma Hamilton than a famous affair, but Infamous doesn't really convincingly uncover any of it. And although the bare facts we're presented with show someone who was mistreated in various ways all her life, it really doesn't seem like De Angelis likes the Emma she's put on stage: Vain and self-obsessed, in the first act she has literally turned her mother into her housekeeper and errand-woman, in the second she's selfishly dragged her daughter into a miserable existence she could have saved her from.

The real-life mother-daughter casting might make for good publicity but Michael Oakley's production isn't done any favours by Quentin, R's unsubtle performance. Riad Richie occasionally pops in to change the dynamic as a love-struck Italian and sympathetic Frenchman, and designer Fotini Dimou gives us one of the lo-fi set transformations this theatre is very good at. But this remains a very flat evening - it does feel like De Angelis committed to writing a play about Emma Hamilton, and was too far into it to stop when she realised she'd found little to say, and little to like about her.

Infamous by April De Angelis is booking until the 7th of October at Jermyn Street Theatre.

Running time: 1 hour 50 minutes including interval.

Photo credit: Steve Gregson.