Theatre Review - The Invention of Love
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| Dickie Beau as Oscar Wilder and Simon Russell Beale as A E Housman [Helen Murray] |
Tom Stoppard’s cerebral (and verbose) play about AE Housman, the Latin scholar and celebrated poet of A Shropshire Lad, is beautifully staged by Blanche McIntyre.
The Invention of Love opens with 77-year old Housman (Simon Russell Beale) being ferried across the Styx to Hades. Along the way he revisits the Oxford University of his youth and reconnects with his younger self (Matthew Tennyson).
We follow Housman’s academic journey as an undergraduate, the philosophical debates punctuated by boat trips, as well as the friends that helped shape his life, including his two roommates: Moses Jackson (Ben Lloyd-Hughes) a scientist and athlete, and Alfred Pollard (Seamus Dillane).
This is the Oxford of Ruskin (Dominic Rowan) and Pater (Jonnie Broadbent) and a student called Oscar Wilde (Dickie Beau).
The first part is overly taken up with the classics and men quoting Latin at one another. The second half focuses on Housman’s long, unrequited love for Jackson – after university they both worked as clerks in London’s Patent Office and shared a flat until 1885.
Stoppard suggests his infatuation was the main reason Housman, a brilliant scholar, failed his finals.
There is only one woman in the cast (Florence Dobson as Housman’s sister Katharine) and watching a succession of men debate the classics and changes in legislation, palls after a while, especially given the three-hour running time (including an interval).
There are compensations: the stellar cast and designer Morgan Large’s split-level set combined with Peter Mumford’s lighting are impressive.
The emotional heart of the play lies in Housman’s attempts to accept his sexuality while surrounded by colleagues and tutors who referred to homosexuality as “beastly”.
Pivotal scenes with Jackson and later Wilde, comfortable in himself, are electrifying.
Until February 1