‘Not everything is good because it’s old,” sighs the prologue to Isobel McArthur’s debut RSC show. Its launchpad is a rousing Elizabethan play by Thomas Heywood, an all-action yarn about a Plymouth barmaid turned pirate captain. The last RSC production in 1986 starred a swashbuckling Imelda Staunton.
Richard Katz’s rueful prologue introduces “The Dog and Arsehole, where we lay our scene.” Ana Inés Jabares-Pita designs a fully pubby pub – pumps, flock carpet, stuffed fish above the bar. Our resourceful heroine, Liz (a redoubtable Amber James), catches rats and fends off lairy blokes, until an accidental death hurls her to a neglected Cornish pub. Practical to her fingertips, she reopens it as a community hub, the Open Arms.
Heywood went large on patriotism and sticking it to the Spanish; McArthur prefers peace and a monarch redeemed by a big old snog. “There’s no bigger waste than love that you never let in,” Liz declares. It’s a more palatable ethos, even if it robs the heroine of a good fight scene. Instead, Liz denounces patriarchal capitalism, starts a knitting club and comforts the brokenhearted. She only scorns Spencer (sweet Philip Labey), her entitled milksop of a suitor in foofy shoes. When he offers to work in the cellar, she scoffs, “I’m not providing immersive tourism experiences for posh boys.”
Even the shrewdest landlady has a heart, and when Spencer is caught up in the Spanish wars, Liz repurposes her timber bar into a ship and sails off to find him. The pub regulars come armed with novelty waterwings and a Lonely Planet guide. Emmy Stonelake’s scrub-haired potgirl and Tom Babbage’s boastful postie (“either a liar or the world’s thickest genius”) are especially winning.
This version of the end of the 16th century has 1970s stylings – ruffs and tracksuits, trade wars and karaoke. McArthur also directs; her work – notably Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of) – is always served with ladles of silliness and lashings of music. This show offers rhyming couplets, venerable gags and songs aplenty – the actor-musicians play nostalgic comfort tunes on tuba, accordion and percussive legs of ham. Making a rollicking new romp from a baggy old play, it’s an evening, said a friend, of “quality mucking about”.
At the Swan theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until 14 January
