W S Gilbert is better known as one half of the partnership Gilbert & Sullivan. His 1877 farce met with a distinctly ambivalent reception and one can imagine why, its criticism of all those with mercenary motives lampooning one of the principal Victorian preoccupations. Sam Walters' revival is a good choice for Christmas, both in terms of festive pleasure and pertinence, given our own age of rampant seasonal commercialism which dovetails with the play's theme of material duplicity.

Cheviot Hill is a self-centred young man about town possessing a disastrous weakness. He cannot help proposing marriage to every attractive girl he meets and soon this rash behaviour has landed him with not one but three potential spouses. Everyone in the play directly benefits or suffers according to whether he remains single or weds, the most afflicted being his friend Belvawney. Self-interest is at the heart of the play, each character professing undying adoration whilst covertly calculating financial advantage in each potential union. The gap between appearance and reality is often very amusing and Cheviot's Hill own inability to fathom that his appeal may be more material than amorous has much comic mileage.

Walters and cast certainly extract maximum value from this satiric farce, the only problem being that the play itself is rather uneven. Octavia Walters and Claire Redcliffe convince as two of Hill's fiancees, women whose belies their protestations of worldly innocence but it's Caitlin Mottram's delightfully jaunty Belinda, bouncing between suitors Hill and Belvawney who really highlights the moral absurdity of the world these people inhabit; a world dominated by protocol but secretly fuelled by greed.

(Amanda Hodges)
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