She Stoops to Conquer

The second play of McCarter Theater's season is She Stoops to Conquer, a venerable piece from the eighteenth-century, a crowd-pleasing comedy by Irish writer Oliver Goldsmith. I saw this play over twenty-five years ago, when the drama department of my college put it on, and I'm amazed that I remembered practically none of it. This may be because of my faulty memory, or that the play is a gossamer confection that is amusing for a few hours and then dissolves upon careful contemplation.

The play is built around a practical joke. A country squire, Mr. Hardcastle, is expecting the son of his friend, Charles Marlow, to visit from London. He is hoping to match the young man to his daughter, Kate. Mr. Hardcastle's buffoonish stepson, Tony Lumpkin, meets the young man and his friend, George Hastings, in the local saloon (where Tony often abides) and plays a prank--he tells them that they are miles from the Hardcastle abode, but an inn is nearby. That inn, of course, is the Hardcastle estate. When Marlow and Hastings arrive they treat Mr. Hardcastle like an innkeeper. When Marlow, who is notoriously shy around women of his own station, meets Kate, she pretends to be a barmaid (thus "stooping to conquer") and his brash impudent nature comes out.

This is all very funny, kind of a very old version of a certain kind of Broadway farce. There are deeper meanings, if you choose to look for them, such as the contrast between the country folk of England and the more foppish Londoners (Mrs. Hardcastle is a broad caricature of a woman who would like to be thought of as fashionable), and also a comic examination of the differences in social class. Marlow, besotted with Kate as a barmaid, tells her he can't possibly marry her, but of course when he finally finds out who she is all is fine. Also, Tony is waiting to come of age to gain an inheritance, and therefore feels he can act the clown with impunity. At the end of the play he is told that he is already of age (apparently birthdays weren't a big deal back then) and he suddenly changes.

The production is capably directed by Nicholas Martin, who has instructed the cast to act with broad strokes, which is wise in a play of this type. All of the cast excel, particularly Paxton Whitehead and Kate Nielsen as the Hardcastles, Brooks Ashmankas as Tony, Jessica Stone as Kate (I could visually Reese Witherspoon in a film version), and looking like Paul McCartney circa 1965, Jon Patrick Walker as Charles Marlow.