Review: THE LIBERTINE, Theatre Royal Haymarket, 27 September 2016

In the prologue, a rogueish Dominic Cooper tells us that we're not going to like him - really, we're not - and that any sympathy for this devilish rake is misplaced. But, of course, we do very much like the Second Earl of Rochester, with his witty rhyming couplets, his seething sexuality and his sartorially enhanced swagger - until things start to go awry.

At first, it's just the lads larking and lolling, albeit the 17th-century lads, boozing, whoring and gambling in a way that seems more acceptable if done centuries in the past. It helps that they're all pretty funny (if a little Blackadderishly familiar), with Mark Hadfield's modish playwright, George Etherege, the pick of the bunch. There's a splendid turn too from Jasper Britton as Charles II, weary of statecraft but not of slap and tickle.

But if the first half shows us the up side of carousing, especially if, like Rochester, you simply refuse any role for the superego to control one's urges, the second half shows us its cost. Rochester has already lost some credit in 21st-century minds by treating his wife abominably at a portrait sitting (even if it does produce a truly magnificent, eccentric, hypnotic picture, projected as a backdrop to the action and reproduced in the excellent programme), but the alcoholism and the inevitable STDs catch up with him, breaking his spirit, before carrying him off at 33 after a bit of unconvincing religious sloganising. As is the case with even the most charismatic of those gripped by alcoholism, few friends and family will have missed him much.

And that is one of the problems with the play: the end is inevitable, yet it takes a long time to get there with few compensations along the way. Sure, Rochester takes mannered actress, Elizabeth Barry (a strangely one-tone portrayal by Ophelia Lovibond) and puts her in touch with her emotions, allowing them to shine through in performance making her the toast of London, but he seems determined neither to make her happy nor himself, so that can make the lovers' company a little wearisome. As Rochester's long-suffering wife, Alice Bailey Johnson looks on, icily passive aggressive, understandably despising her husband's fast set of metropolitan mates, but her underwritten part makes her little more than a scowling censor of Rochester's selfish behaviour.

Terry Johnson's production features a couple of excellent turns from Will Barton as Alcock (yes, Alcock) a droll servant and Lizzie Roper as the infinitely patient manager of the theatre where Miss Barry gives her Ophelias and Desdemonas, and a stunning set-piece song in praise of the dildo, which I felt a a little er... shoehorned in, but it got a great reception.

In one way or another, most of the laughs originate in writer Stephen Jeffreys' pyrotechnic language. Drawing on the full pungency of the English lexicon's most taboo swearing, Rochester and his pals use words as swords and shields, each sentence weighed for its impact, each phrase as good, or as bad, as it can be. Though their sentiments and subjects are 17th century, their language, without ever jarring with anachronisms, is very much the product of the 21st century.

And if he were around today, what would Rochester think of his London in 2016? Perhaps we should ask Russell Brand.

The Libertine is at the Theatre Royal Haymarket until 3 December.

Photo Alastair Muir