THE CUSTOM OF THE COUNTRY
Nicholas Wright has taken a similar approach to his play, The Custom of the Country. He started with an early 17th-century play by Beaumont and Fletcher and mixed in some bloody Jacobean tragedy and some Shakespearean romance, full of magic and miracles. For good measure, he threw in liberal doses of farce, satire, and historical drama. He seems to have believed that such a daring mixture would yield something original and exciting, but the result can be summed up with my son’s expressive reaction to his own experiments–“Blaaah!”
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A description of the play is deceptively lively. Director Peter Forster has managed to slow the action down to an exasperating crawl. The Custom of the Country is primarily farce, but it’s played like tragedy: the characters linger over their predicaments and react with languor instead of manic surprise. Even the doors seem to slam in slow motion.
