Theatre review: The False Servant

Paul Miller is coming up to his final season as Artistic Director of the Orange Tree, a theatre he notoriously took over on the day it lost all its funding. He turned its fortunes around with an eclectic menu of surprisingly ambitious new work alternating with reliable classics, predominantly from Rattigan and Shaw, and it'll be interesting to see how far his successor Tom Littler will want to tinker with a successful formula. One thing I won't miss if they go in the new regime are Miller's occasional ventures to 18th century France for the comedies of Pierre Marivaux, which between The Lottery of Love and the latest offering, The False Servant, haven't exactly got my pulse racing. A wealthy young woman (Lizzy Watts) is contemplating a potential suitor, but wants to be sure of his character. Disguising herself as a man and calling herself The Chevalier, she befriends Lelio (Julian Moore-Cook) and immediately finds out why she should avoid the match at all costs.

Theatre review: The Lottery of Love

Its programming is fairly varied but Artistic Director Paul Miller's productions of classics a couple of times a year have become a signature of the Orange Tree. He usually picks British plays from the last century or so, but this time he's ventured a bit further afield, to the 18th century French writer Marivaux and his comedy The Lottery of Love. Sylvia (Dorothea Myer-Bennett) and Richard (Ashley Zhangazha) have been promised to each other since childhood, and are about to meet for the first time. Their fathers have both agreed they only need to go ahead with the marriage if they like each other, and Sylvia wants to make sure she catches Richard as he really is, not just on his best behaviour. So she hatches a scheme, agreed to by her father Mr Morgan (Pip Donaghy,) to trade places with her maid Louisa (Claire Lams,) and get all the gossip from her prospective husband's servants.