"The Provoked Wife". Trinity College

How ironic that a play written by Sir John Vanbrugh, architect of Blenheim Palace, that most extravagant and baroque of all British buildings, should be mounted in the de Jager auditorium in Trinity College. It's a beautiful space, designed primarily for lectures and music. But it's restrained, cool, and unostentatiously modern. Putting on a Restoration Comedy in here is akin to holding a rock concert in an operating theatre. The acoustically-tuned, light oak woodwork crushes any illusion of another world, which meekly tries to stand its tiny ground, obscured by echoes of all the preceding day's powerpoints.

This room shows you why lecture theatres are great for lectures, films, music and even stand-up comedy. But not for theatre. You either need to conquer the space (which means spending a huge amount on set decoration), or use a room which better reflects the style and mood of your play. Trinity's chapel is the first college chapel ever to be designed in the Baroque style that Vanbrugh pioneered, and it was consecrated in 1693, just three years before The Provoked Wife hit the London stage. It's a gift! Ah well...

And while we're talking about Sir John Vanbrugh, there really should be a play, if not an entire Netflix series, about his life. This man started off as a soldier fighting the French and was imprisoned in the Bastille. After being released he became a prominent Whig (as well as wearing an enormous and foptastic wig) and was part of the plan to remove James the Second from the throne. He then wrote two notorious comedies, The Provoked Wife and The Relapse, which scandalised London society for being sexually explicit and promoting women's rights. And then, completely out of the blue, he bumped into the Duke of Marlborough who promptly commissioned him to design Blenheim Palace - probably for no greater a reason than to annoy his wife, who wanted Christopher Wren. Vanbrugh's overnight career change was so sudden that it prompted Jonathan Swift to write:

Van's genius, without thought or lecture,

Is hugely turn'd to architecture.

His plays, despite superficially being forerunners of Richard Curtis rom-coms, are wild, scurrilous affairs, post-Great-Fire, post-Great-Plague, post-Civil-War. What the hell was there left to believe in? These characters were partying like it's 1699. Perhaps, in our post-Grenfell, post-Covid, post-Brexit world, we're closer than the years suggest.

So what did Trinity Players make of it, in their annual college play?

Apart from the antiseptic surroundings, this show does what college plays are supposed to do. Unlike the cv-populating, near-professional stuff that goes on in OUDS productions, college plays are low-pressure evenings of pleasure, where people can let their work and their hair down and do something different. This occasion has the atmosphere of a 1920s country house weekend where a group of guests has decided to do a play for the rest of the party. 

All does not go to plan. People forget lines, come in the wrong entrances, corpse at each other's mistakes, and improvise entire conversations while waiting for something (I have no idea what) to happen. It doesn't push the boundaries of theatre. Nor is it intended to. 

But it's all done with such obvious fun and friendliness that this evening gradually becomes not about Vanbrugh's play at all, but about what it means to be a part of this college family. Friendliness, intelligence, mutual respect, staying cheerful when things go wrong: these are the qualities the audience members witness and enjoy. The Provoked Wife is merely the vehicle.

Having said that, everybody involved has a definite gift for comedy. Fynn Hyde, as the alcoholic cuckold Sir John Brute, has one of the most gloriously, shamelessly misogynistic opening monologues in history ('My Lady is a young Lady, a fine Lady, a witty Lady, a virtuous Lady,—and yet I hate her') which he nails. Dom Murphy-O'Connor is the definition of deadpan, answering the question 'Are you fond of me?' with the Baldrickesque 'Aye. More than a Frenchman is of soup'. And leading the women, Lady Brute (Lucy Wheeler) is bubbling with extra-marital urgings.

This production is deeply, appealingly and unmistakably Oxford-ish. It's like going punting with friends on a warm June afternoon when your exams are over. Being good at punting is hardly the point. You drop the pole. You fall in the water. You race against another boat. You appreciate the privilege of being in this place and part of this community. And you have fun.