A spiralling maze has been painted across the stage floor and a metallic flowery canopy hangs overhead. In the corner, a Hepworth-esque sculpture suggests a crouched naked body or perhaps a mouth gaping open in a scream. Simon Daw’s abstract set is pitched somewhere between charming and threatening, never quite revealing itself. It’s the ideal backdrop for Marivaux’s complex 1724 comedy The False Servant, which is ostensibly about love – but is really all about money.
Martin Crimp’s gleaming translation, which premiered at the National in 2004, manages to be both carefree yet exquisitely controlled. There’s a canny ease about Crimp’s dialogue, which makes light work of Marivaux’s intricate plot, packed with deception, disguise and double-crossing characters. The wordplay never feels overplayed and only occasionally draws attention to itself with a neatly timed rhyming couplet or a very silly aside.
