The Cabinet Minister at Menier Chocolate Factory – review

In theater as in comedy, timing is everything, so Arthur Wing Pinero’s story of a high ranking MP embroiled in financial scandals couldn’t have been revived at a more apposite time, given the current media focus on the monetary affairs of the new UK government . Furthermore, there’s a poignancy to it The Cabinet Minister opening on the day Maggie Smith’s death was announced, since the production’s leading lady Nancy Carroll has, perhaps more than any other actress of her generation, inherited the dame’s mantle when it comes to high comedy. As Lady Kitty Twombley, the scheming, financially incontinent wife of the titular character, she’s ferociously precise and focused, flamboyantly camp when required, but, crucially, rooted in truth. At her most adorable when she’s behaving most appallingly, it’s virtually impossible to take your eyes off her.

She’s a highlight in an evening of rare, unexpected pleasure. Paul Foster’s delight-stuffed staging isn’t really a revival but more an all-guns-blazing reinvention of a Victorian farce that, let’s be honest, nobody was really gagging to see disinterred (the last London production in 1991 was a pretty bore, despite a starry cast). This version is pretty too – Janet Bird’s period sets and costumes are absolutely ravishing – but it’s a hell of a lot more fun. The relevance to the present day is obvious but never belaboured, even in a piquant coda which suggests that power and privilege have changed hands down the years but are still essentially the same.

Carroll, adapting the Pinero as well as chewing the scenery, has done a fabulous resuscitation job, cutting the running time, elucidating the plot, excising extraneous characters, adding music (half the cast are actor-musicians, under the expert direction of composer Sarah Travis) and enough double entendres to make a clergyman blush. Foster whips this confection into a delirious soufflé that rises consistently across a fleet, witty couple of hours, where the tension between high stakes and comic joy is perfectly balanced, before exploding in a riot of recriminations and outrageous but rigorously disciplined performances.

Phoebe Fildes and Laurence Ubong Williams are terrific as a pair of working class siblings determined to work their way up the social ladder by whatever means necessary, and Nicholas Rowe lends the appropriate sense of controlled panic under an elegantly urbane exterior to the Right Honorable Julian Twombley , the MP teetering on the brink of disaster. Sara Crowe is deliciously funny as his meddlesome sister, with an opinion on everything and a penchant for interfering in the marriage of her army-trained son (Dom Hodson, hilariously approaching every situation as though on the verge of going into battle).

Dillie Keane, resembling a dyspeptic Caledonian version of Whistler’s Mother, steals every scene she’s in as bonkers Lady Macphail, prone to describing her native Scotland in ever more extravagant terms, blithely unaware of how she’s socially stifling her heroically gormless son (Matthew Woodyatt, glorious ). Rosalind Ford and George Blagden make charming, and very easy to root for, unconventional young lovers, while Romaya Weaver, in a fine professional debut, and Joe Edgar are hugely engaging as a pair of perennially silly children of privilege.

Then there’s Carroll, launching herself at the role of Lady Kitty, raised on a farm but now hysterically fixated on retaining her social standing and money, with irresistible comic relish and gimlet-eyed intensity. Witnessing her spit out lines like “I am drained in duplicity!” at a moment of maximum tension, or turning to the audience with a self-satisfied leer when her dastardly plans look like coming good, is to see a sublime, peerless comedienne at work, and every drama student in London should hasten to the Menier to experience high comedy playing of this standard.

So should anyone else in search of a rollicking good time, where everyone and everything from the sublime cast to Oliver Fenwick’s glowing lighting, Betty Marini’s elaborate wigs and the joyful dances by Joanna Goodwin, are on the same crazy page. Realistically, a straight revival of the Pinero original would have been a bit stodgy, but Carroll, Foster and team have transformed it into a life-enhancing triumph.