The Misanthrope
After Moliere
Comedy Theatre

by Quentin Letts, Daily Mail, December 18, 2009

Keira Knightley may be one of 21st century cinema's revered objects but on stage she proves little better than adequate.

Her arrival on the West End in an interesting (but intellectually disingenuous) treatment of Moliere's Le Misanthrope is, well, on the dull side.

She has all the charisma of a serviceable goldfish. Miss Knightley has a flawless face but it does not move about much.

In a film actress this is often an advantage but on stage it is a snag. It's like giving a carpenter a blunt chisel.

On film you can sit like a cat and allow the director to do much of the mood work. The occasional word here and there, a longing glance to camera, and, hey presto, you're an international celeb.

On stage you have to project, not just the voice (here a tuneless American accent) but also the whole being, physically, emotionally.

This is particularly true if you are playing some supposedly ravishing creature who manages to be the centre of attention. Miss Knightley's character, Jennifer, is meant to be a movie star, a magnet not just for the lusts of assorted, grisly hangers-on, but also of a mercurial playwright called Alceste (Damian Lewis).

Alas, the character as portrayed by Miss Knightley is little beyond an elegant mannequin. The only time she starts to soar, oddly, is when she is dressed in a 17th-century French costume.

Would Alceste, so enraged by modern art and politics, really give such a dull dolly more than a glance?

This production bears little relation to Moliere, even though the long-dead Frenchman appears on the credits. It is really the work of Martin Crimp.

Who he? Well, here's the paradox. Chum Crimp is one of the most laughably fashionable and, in my view, over-promoted playwrights of luvvie London.

His work with trendy director Katie Mitchell is absurdly garlanded by some of the impressionable fools of our state-subsidised theatre.

Furthermore, here he is riding in to town on the back of a transatlantic star such as Miss Knightley, who is better known simply for being famous than she is for her thespian artistry.

And yet Mr Crimp's verse play, often excitingly angry, makes repeated attacks on celebrity and flattery and falseness, and the whole gruesome world of the fashion-arts darlings.

It does not help Miss Knightley that she is up with an accomplished cast including Damian Lewis, Dominic Rowan, Nicholas Le Prevost and Tim McMullan (who with his one bad eye and his back-of-larynx voice is a comic maestro). Tara FitzGerald is also on the premises, playing the ex-best friend of Miss Knightley's Jennifer.

Ah, FitzGerald. Now there is a proper stage actress, with a mouth that can go from winsome to goofy in one flash of a smile. She only has to place a hand on hip to have buckets more allure than crystal-limbed Miss Knightley.

Some may find Mr Crimp's verses a little Rupert Bearish, in places even like William McGonagall (he rhymes "Jackson Pollocks" with "b*******") but I quite liked the siscipline of the form.

More irritating was a certain pretentiousness, not least in the bad language. I counted the F word 21 times. If Alceste truly yearns to be an iconoclast might he not find it more daring to abjure such grottiness?

This is an example of how Mr Crimp's fury at modern Britain feels misplaced. I know the Left is currently scratching around for a cultural purpose but as a Leftwinger, Mr Crimp may yet have to realise that it is his own political kinsmen who have brought us to this sorry state.

Casting the underpowered Miss Knightley in this anti-fashion play is merely indicative of his lack of self-knowledge.

Caption: Up close: With co-star Damian Lewis.

Caption: Little more than an elegant mannequin: Keira Knightley as Jennifer.