A Fool in Love

Van Badham’s often amusing bawdiness and unrelenting expletives mix oddly with the ghost of De Vega’s poetic language and structure, just as the mugging and over-compensating physical “comedy” adds yet more unreality. 

A Fool in Love just isn’t funny or sharply satirical enough to carry us on for two and a half hours, even if the second act delivers a welcome deep twist.  With Badham’s impressive resume (and dramaturg Ruth Little) you’d think she’d know a thing or two about editing and succinct comedy.

Luckily, Contessa Treffone is outstanding, anchored in truth, as the gorgeously dim-witted and yet surprising Phynayah, while Melissa Kahraman is close behind as her stratospherically confident, vampy sister, Vanessa. 

Megan Wilding crashes through the plot with her usual hilarious antics and giggles, but the men are less successful in their buffoonery, except perhaps Arkia Ashraf’s straight-played, impoverished student of philosophy from Western Sydney.  Alfie Gledhill is another suitor, as is Aaron Tsindos, while Johnny Nasser is the crazed father.

The real stars are the creative team, especially Isabel Hudson’s ruby red set of columns and arches, curtained and displaying oddities, and so colourfully lit by Benjamin Brookman.

Hudson’s top brand, knock-off fashions adds a fantastic satirical heft to this consumerist world: her costumes also lift the entertainment value.

It’s the first mainstream gig for director Kenneth Mordella, who with his cast have turned to even more excess to make this underdeveloped comedy work.  

But then, my partner loved it.

Martin Portus

Photographer: Daniel Boud