She Stoops to Conquer at the West Yorkshire Playhouse, Leeds

2/5

If it’s not damning the company with faint praise, Northern Broadsides are usually dependably capable.

It therefore takes some time to acknowledge that their latest production, a revival of Oliver Goldsmith’s 1773 farce She Stoops To Conquer, falls some way short of captivating the audience’s collective funny bone.

A comedy of manners, it sees the well-educated Charles Marlow (Oliver Gomm) being misdirected to his potential suitor’s crumbling country house.

Believing it to be an inn he and best friend George Hastings (Guy Lewis) treat their host, the level-headed Mr Hardcastle (Howard Chadwick), with disdain for his imagined paid-for service and interrupt his creaky anecdotes.

It’s a lack of respect that’s socially shocking under Conrad Nelson’s light direction yet has a comic edge in the knowledge that farces always bring just deserts to such behaviour.

In this case it’s Marlow’s encumbrance with women — a lecherous rogue around the lower classes but a bumbling, stuttering fool when faced with his social equals.

This hinders his courtship of Kate Hardcastle (Hannah Edwards) until, informed of his ways, she swaps her animal print finery for clothes more appropriate for a barmaid.

Her scheming intelligence helps to unravel the misunderstanding that’s engineered by her stepbrother, the puckish Tony Lumpkin (Jon Trenchard), a playboy who’s forever breaking into bawdy song or playing the piano.

A signature feature of any Northern Broadsides production, the musical elements — directed by Rebekah Hughes — are exuberantly executed. They nonetheless can’t disguise the fact that She Stoops To Conquer is little more than a posh pantomime that never quite knows when to turn down the volume.

Touring until December 13 2014

Susan Darlington