THE WOMAN IN THE MOON

THE WOMAN IN THE MOON

The Dolphin's Back at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

19.08.2017

Lyly's mythological fantasy – rebadged by The Dolphin's Back as an Astrological Sex Comedy – is a perfect fit for the “painted firmament” of the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

It's a fascinating piece, foreshadowing A Midsummer Night's Dream. “All is but a poet's dream,” says the Prologue [Leo Wan, later a suave Sol]. His only play written in blank verse, it was quite possibly intended for his regular playing company, Paul's Boys. Certainly there's plenty of roles for younger men, and for women, not least the central role of Pandora, the largest female part, apparently, in any play of the time.

She's played here by Bella Heesom, with Julia Sandiford as [Mother] Nature, the Creator in this myth. Pandora's four shepherd suitors, a very entertaining Keystone Cops quartet in wellies and cable knit sweaters, include Adam Cunis's antipodean Melos, and James Askill's ukulele-strumming Iphicles. Among the “envious planets” - Pandora has robbed them of their finest attributes – are Tim Frances's priapic Jove, who invites Pandora to fondle his golden sceptre and inspires her with anger, Joy Cruickshank's slinky Venus, and Ammar Duffus's Hermes, who teaches Pandora deceitful wiles.

There's a lovely Gunophilus from James Thorne – this is Pandora's love-sick minion, surely another role for a younger boy. And Cynthia, the new-fangled, moody moon, in whose orb Pandora chooses to spend eternity, sharing her fickle, feminine nature, is beautifully played by Rachel Winters.

The staging is necessarily simple, with Pandora's circular bed - “the inconstant moon” – changing colour as each Planet wreaks revenge, and doubling as a convenient cave.

James Wallace's lively production – ninety minutes of non-stop action – adds to Lyly's classical wit and word-play a winning blend of broad farce, physical high-jinks and wicked innuendo. Thus cleverly bringing a sixteenth-century rarity alive for a grateful modern audience.