Stunning performances fill Soulpepper Theatre’s The Norman Conquests playing at Toronto’s Young Centre for the Performing Arts
At first blush, The Norman Conquests (playing at the Young Centre for the Performing Arts) would be easy to confuse with any number of tacky 1970s British sex farces; the sort of play in which horny middle-aged men chase scantily-dressed women in and out of constantly-slamming doors while dodging various wives, ministers, tax inspectors, etc.
Ayckbourn’s script is a child of this genre: the philandering husband, the impotent cuckold, the ice queen and the frustrated virgin all make their mandatory appearances, complete with a furtive shag on a truly appalling hearthrug.
But while they’re filled to the brim with sex and raunch, bedroom farces lack intimacy: we laugh at the jiggle and wiggle and the slap and the tickle, but that’s as good as it gets. People over thirty having sex, haw-haw-haw.
What sets Conquests apart from its seamy brethren is in escaping this inevitable descent into laughing at middle-aged people fucking; in finding clever and innovative places to insert moments of insight, of love, of trust and of intimate feeling. Conquests is a clever, hilarious, unflinching and playful adventure through the shadows and crannies of adulthood, and more than lives up to its billing as one of Ayckbourn’s greatest–and most challenging–projects.
Put it in the hands of Soulpepper, and you know you’re in for a real treat.
