Jezebel
Jezebel
Tron Theatre, Glasgow
Keith Bruce
Not that it has been billed as such (an opportunity missed, surely) but here is another show in the Tron Spring of Sex Comedies. Following hard (oo-er) on the heels of the Random Accomplice/Birds of Paradise co-production Wendy Hoose, long-established Dublin company Rough Magic return to Glasgow with their 2012 hit, a story of modern love and a metrosexual couple whose quest to spice up their love life leads them to recruit a third party, the titular, brightly clad artist.
Company founder and revival director Lynne Parker and her cast give writer Mark Cantan's text every support its demanding wordplay asks, from the Dorothy Parker-esque put downs of the opening scene to the sequence of deceptions and misunderstandings that build to its labour suite, erhem, climax. Oops, gave it away.
The culmination is that both the controlling Robin (Margaret McAuliffe) and the ditzy Jezebel (Valerie O'Connor) are impregnated by statistician Alan (Peter Daly) in their one night of passion, contraception notwithstanding - an unlikelihood he is ideally qualified to calculate.
So what starts as a comedy of manners ends as a frenetic farce de nos jours, the twist being that the cast have to mime the apartment doors and understair cupboard to make it work.
In fact the cast are as physically skilful, in understated ways as well, as the are verbally dexterous, so it never descends into trousers at ankles silliness, even when waters are breaking on all sides. Another comparison, to illustrate the production's classiness despite its content, might be with Yasmena Reza's hit Art.
Which might have made it seem really outrageous had Johnny McKnight not pushed the envelope so far last week.
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