SHE STOOPS TO CONQUER National Theatre/Olivier

Oliver Goldsmith’s 18th century comedy is one of the most delightful plays in the English language. Good-humoured, affectionate and beautifully constructed, it is based on something that actually had happened to Goldsmith in his youth. He mistook the country house of a wealthy neighbour for an inn and treated his host as a landlord during his overnight stay. In his play his shy hero is mortified to find that the saucy barmaid he has been trying to seduce is, in fact, the nice girl he has come down to court. Harry Hadden-Paton as the young blade, alternating between tongue-tied sheepishness and boorish swaggering, is as frisky as a foal. Katherine Kelly stoops a bit too crudely. It’s a great pity that director Jamie Lloyd should encourage the actors to give such broad performances. It spoils the comedy. The worst offender is Sophie Thompson, who shamelessly, plays to the gallery as if she were in weekly rep and not at the National Theatre. Thompson is genuinely funny only once and that is when she finds her jewel-box has been stolen.