Reviews for The Libertine

The average rating for The Libertine based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-01-05 00:00:00 Debbie Frederick The script is probably better than the film - that was my impression when watching the movie two and a half years ago, and so it is. The Libertine is packed with great lines; some of its middling moments would seem outstanding in other plays, and best of all, that declamatory staginess too obvious in contemporary drama works perfectly because this is about Restoration wits and theatre people, and it's entirely fitting for them to speak that way. It incorporates bits of scholarship without looking as if it does, for instance a reference to Hobbes, considered to have had something of an influence, not the most immediately obvious one, on elements the Earl of Rochester's works. It would be too easy for a character like Rochester to steal all the scenes wholesale, but his fellow poets and playwrights, and the king, can quite keep up with his wit, even if they do all think it's dull without him. And best of all Elizabeth Barry, his lover for a while, and eventual superstar of her age, has just as much fire as he, in her own distinct way. (Samantha Morton was okay in the film, but Barry's lines really needed someone with a stronger presence and voice.) The play makes use of a probably apocryphal story about Rochester courting her after offering to coach her in acting - but in showing her as someone who already had ideas for a new approach to the craft, it makes her not his creation, more that she just needed the right person to bounce off. And soon enough she was away, becoming more successful than him (which he did not take too well to) - though the fame of writers from the pre-film era inevitably has stuck more strongly over the centuries than that of actors. The tone of some of their exchanges was so familiar to me: R: I still love theatres, I just despise what happens inside them. It is absurd, the way the whole farrago engages people so. B: It's a world, like any other - the law courts or the counting house. If you engage in life, you engage necessarily in some absurdity. There's a charismatic aura to such iconoclastic opinionated people that has often drawn me in - typically it's been hardline New Atheists - but at the same time some reflex compels me to reason and argue, and try to make them consider a different perspective on their views. Although on most of them it doesn't work, and the enterprise tires and frustrates me, as we both remain convinced we're right. Another reviewer has kindly posted Rochester's prologue speech. It's a great piece of writing, and also interesting to read when a bit older, when you're really able to hear someone warning you what they are like, and knowing you once wouldn't have really been able to listen, or not wanted to, or not fully understood as a gut feeling. That this person may be fun, but they will also be a goddamn problem if you get close to them. Though real-life Rochester was not particularly good looking. (I'm not one of those people for whom charisma can make that irrelevant, that sort is to be left behind in the pub having laughed at their jokes and no more.) Contemporary portraits suggest vague resemblance to latter day English toffs of varying destructiveness levels such as George Osborne, Tim Nice But Dim and Michael Portillo. And talking of legendary rakes who weren't actually great lookers, some bits of this storyare rather like the later BBC series on Casanova - engaging the troublesome servant whom he saw as some kindred spirit, masquerading for a while as a quack. Or maybe there was a C17th-C18th handbook on rakishness that contained these as tips... What the blurb means by "thoroughly modern in its attitude to Rochester's sexual indulgence," is not only a lack of prudery in his favour, but also giving prostitutes and servants - not just the wife and mistress - space to complain about him and his ilk; the energy and humour of the play is still maintained in those scenes. It's always clear that the flipside of his charisma and sense of fun is that he's a right royal nuisance, destructive not only to himself, but it's done without a hectoring tone. Like all great decadent stories, there is decay as well as indulgence: Time is but dust, and Kings, and me also, the body maggoting so soon, so soon after I was godlike and sturdy. My legs ache in the morning and my brain is the dinner of a slowly ruminating beast. Perhaps Rochester's deathbed religious conversion disappoints some viewers, but, for a seventeenth century man convinced he embodied the spirit of his times, appropriate, surely. Anyway, I can't remember when I last had this much fun reading a play.

Review # 2 was written on 2011-04-17 00:00:00 Doug O'toole This play, set during the reign of Charles II about John Wilmot, Earl of Rochester, has my favorite prologue ever. Before sharing the prologue, allow me to influence whose voice you hear in your head while reading it. On stage, Rochester was initially played by John Malkovich, and I wish I had seen his performance. I can hear him in my mind delivering these lines. The film adaptation starred Johnny Depp as Rochester, with a slightly, but not overly so, abbreviated version of this prologue. Excellent! (John Malkovich played Charles II in the movie version.) Choose your actor... "Allow me to be frank at the commencement: you will not like me. No, I say you will not. The gentlemen will be envious and the ladies will be repelled. You will not like me now and you will like me a good deal less as we go on. Oh yes, I shall do things you will like. You will say "That was a noble impulse in him" or "He played a brave part there," but DO NOT WARM TO ME, it will not serve. When I become a BIT OF A CHARMER that is your danger sign for it prefaces the change into THE FULL REPTILE a few seconds later. What I require is not your affection but your attention. I must not be ignored or you will find me as troublesome a package of humanity as ever pissed into the Thames. Now. Ladies. An announcement. (He looks around.) I am up for it. All the time. That's not a boast. Or an opinion. It is bone hard medical fact. I put it around, d'you know? And you will watch me putting it around and sigh for it. Don't. It is a deal of trouble for you and you are better off watching and drawing your conclusions from a distance than you would be if I got my tarse pointing up your petticoats. Gentlemen. (He looks around.) Do not despair, I am up for that as well. When the mood is on me. And the same warning applies. Now, gents: if there be vizards in the house, jades, harlots (as how could there not be), leave them be for the moment. Still your cheesy erections till I have had my say. But later when you shag -- and later you will shag, I shall expect it of you and I will know if you have let me down -- I wish you to shag with my homuncular image rattling in your gonads. Feel how it was for me, how it is for me and ponder. "Was that shudder the same shudder he sensed? Did he know something more profound? Or is there some wall of wretchedness that we all batter with our heads at that shining, livelong moment?" That is it. That is my prologue, nothing in rhyme, certainly no protestations of modesty, you were not expecting that, I trust. I reiterate only for those who have arrived late or were buying oranges or were simply not listening: I am John Wilmot, Second Earl of Rochester and I do not want you to like me." If that prologue grabs you the way it grabbed me, you may like the play (or movie). But the prologue gives fair warning and so does history. Debauchery has consequences, and not pretty ones. This play does not want you to like it.