Why do we go to the theatre? To laugh; to cry; to be entertained; but often
the pleasure we derive from the experience has more depth. We go to the theatre to see something that relates specifically to us, to discover a production with a personal sense of relevance. Marber's updated version of Moliere's debaucherous play, Don Juan, does all of these things fantastically. The audience is left peering into their own souls and examining their moral codes and consciences. Rarely does one see a production with such a strong sense of personal and contemporary relevance.In Grandage's production, the setting is the present day and the location, London's millennium party scene: cocaine, ecstasy, prostitutes, alcohol, pumping house music, swanky hotels and expensive clothing are all ubiquitous.
The legendary Don Juan is now a wealthy, young, charismatic lord who frolics around in Soho's corners and the rest of the globe, delighting in sampling every kind of woman the world has to offer. He is played by Rhys Ifans, who is probably more familiar to us as Hugh Grant's Welsh flatmate in Notting Hill. However: do not let yourself be fooled; Ifans' Don Juan is as suave as ever. He saunters around the stage, never feeling the need to rouse himself to anything more active than a casual, sultry stroll (unless, of course, it could result in some coital action). This is a Don Juan who couldn't be any smoother, wittier, or more entertaining. It is a hilarious production with guaranteed laughs. My favourite scene follows an accident on a Thames boat party: Don Juan attempts to woo and seduce one partner whilst in the midst of receiving indiscreet fellatio from another victim of his seduction. The ensuing scene, with its particularly sexual brand of slapstick, will have you in fits.
Don Juan's sexually predatory behaviour and his disregard for fidelity and other peoples' feelings shock the audience, as does his utterly dismissive attitude to religion, be it his own or other peoples' faith. However, his easy and fluent justifications makes us question quite what it is we have a problem with, and whether we believe what we do simply because of what society tells us to think. His casual attitude to inflicting pain upon others alarms us (he doesn't understand that emotion is often inextricable from sex) and his disregard for religion does the same. Marber has changed Moliere's original demand for the character to repent before Christ to a simple apology before one of his victims, but Don Juan still refuses the task. The scene in which Don Juan offers to give a homeless Muslim his Rolex if he blasphemes against Allah made everyone in the audience shift uncomfortably. We are confronted with an absolutely amoral man, and one who refuses to acknowledge or cannot understand morality. It is a strange sensation, and one which leads us to ask ourselves a lot of questions.
Stan, Don Juan's manservant, adds plenty of humour to the production. His delivery is superb: notable one liners include "[he would] do it with anything, even a hole in the ozone layer". But Stan also acts as Don Juan's own conscience. The two men share a much deeper connection than Don Juan likes to admit, which becomes most visible when Stan almost succeeds in phasing the mighty Don, accusing him of loneliness and a desperate quest for companionship. Once more this brings in an extremely poignant question to be asking in today's society. How often do we hear of people sleeping around to fill a void; or being forced between career and family, resulting in a hurried search for a life-long partner as middle-age approaches? The production addresses another one of our society's greatest fears: loneliness.
Despite the humour and food for thought that the production offers, the update doesn't entirely work. Soho is not a place where a rich lord flaunting his money and virility is in anyway uncommon. In Moliere's world the original play's fevered eroticism was part of the shocking nature of the play, and the Don a notable exception to the rule. However, this could then be one of the production's successes.
He still coerces us into examining our own morality even though we view the story and its concepts thought the viewfinder of the hedonistic playground that is modern Soho. In today's world, a play about infidelity and promiscuousness isn't going to shock anyone; it is a credit to both Marber and Grandage that the production carries any moral clout. Instead, the shock factor that the audience experiences comes from DJ's flagrant audacity in his seductions and betrayals. Contemporary audiences are just as shocked by a failure to adhere to society's moral code and our sense of decorum as Moliere's seventeenth-century audience would have been, and our ability to be shocked reminds us, in some small way, of our humanity.
Visit the www.donmarwarehouse.com for more info on tickets. If they are sold out, standing tickets are available from 10am for £7 - a bargain, and not too painful since it only lasts for 90 minutes.
Highly recommended!