The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard. Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London until 01 February 2025, 4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

Photo Credit: Helen Murray.

The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard. Hampstead Theatre, Eton Avenue, Swiss Cottage, London until 01 February 2025,

4☆☆☆☆. Review: William Russell.

“Beale is back triumphant.”

Simon Russell Beale makes a triumphant return to the stage after a couple of year's absence in this wordy, three hour long play about the poet – A Shropshire Lad – and classicist A E Housman, an Oxford contemporary of Oscar Wilde and like him a homosexual who we meet waiting to cross the Styx. The ferryman arrives and the play begins. It is three hours of Stoppard dazzling us with words, his research and a series of confrontations between Housman and his young student self, played by by Matthew Tennyson – it is an inspired pairing – set on and around the Isis. At times it gets a little near three men in a boat, something Stoppard concedes, he had to deal with when the play was first staged in 1979 at the National Theatre with John Wood as Housman. That was a very different production and Wood was a much more abrasive actor than Beale – the back projections showed a glorious Oxford and the Styx was mired in fog. Here we get a jet black stage, skeletal sections of rowing boats which glide on to form a whole and a platform which comes out of the back wall with a walkway above it. The stage is a whirlpool of black and white. It is a rather more serious minded staging. As for Beale, his Housman is more like what A C Benson a fellow academic and brother of the novelist E F Benson, said - “descended from a long line of maiden aunts” - than Wood possibly was, but both men certainly created a figure to hold centre stage at all times. As a scholar Housman was intolerant of others but is considered the finest classicist of his time and is still as highly regarded. But his secret life was the problem – at Oxford he formed a passionate love for a fellow student, Moses Jackson, with whom he did for a while after graduating share a flat but Jackson was heterosexual, did not reciprocate and later moved to India and married. The play won pretty well every accolade going in 1979 but this handsome revival directed by Blanche McIntyre is its first revival and one can see why. The conversations are complex, not all the people involved mean anything any longer and the love that dare not speak its name – although Oscar Wilde certainly makes a case for shouting it out loud – is something that belongs to the past. However the cast is good, Russell Beale as always is magnificent although he, and some of the others early on, had a little trouble projecting to the back wall of the theatre. In row N of the stalls one had problems making them out. It is a case of admiring the playing while finding the confrontations between the two Housmans and the people they knew at time confusing. You need to read the programme notes in advance. The run had to be extended so great was the demand and it certainly deserves a long life. One does feel sorry for Housman and his demons but then what made him a great scholar and a successful poet depended on them.

Cast

Simon Russell Beale – A E Housman

Dickie Beau – Oscar Wilde

Stephen Boxer -mJpowett/Labouchere

Jonnie Broadbent – Pater/Harris

Seamus Dillane - Pollard

Florence Dobson - Katharine Housman

Pattison/Postgate – Peter Landi

Ben Lloyd-Hughes – Jackson

Michael Marcus -Chamberlain/Ellis

Dominic Rowan - \Ruskin/Stead/Jerome

Matthew Tennyson – Housman

Alan Williams – Charon

Creatives

Director – Blanche McIntyre

Designer – Morgan Large

Lighting Designer – Peter Mumford

Composer & Sound Designer – Max Pappenheim

Movement Director – Polly Bennett

Dialect Coach – Daniele Lydon

Theatre, play 16 December 2024

Photo Credit – Helen Murray