Eduardo De Filippo’s comedy Filumena tells an unusual story, which begins with a woman lying on her deathbed begging to marry the man she has loved for 35 years. Once he agrees, she makes a startling recovery, much to the discontent of his unwilling husband and young lover. The audience then finds itself wondering whether Filumena is a woman acting out of desperation for love or for power.
Set in the heat of a Neapolitan spring, this comedy combines a classic tug-of-war of wits, as well as some of the less subtle aspects of the art. It is superbly written, with its comic elements, whilst being quite obvious in places, still retaining a feeling of refinement.
The set design (Morgan Large) is very impressive as it is quite true to what one would expect from the dining room of a great Italian house. It has a sizeable terrace, with large glass windows and doors, and a great sitting area indoors with warm colours spread throughout. The ceiling also features a large painting with an angel, reminiscent of some of the works featured in the Sistine Chapel. The lighting (Nick Richings) added to the feeling of warmth with soft lights, even moments with candles, perfectly complementing the mood of the moment.
The leading pair, played by Felicity Kendal and Matthew Kelly, were simply exquisite! Their comedic timings, as well as their emotional delivery of lines, were perfectly on point. Further, their individual stage presence meant that they were able to command the room within no more than a second.
Another duo which certainly grabbed the attention of the audience was that of Jodie Steele and Sarah Twomey, who played the young lover and the maid respectively. Whilst both were characters with opposite personalities, both received a very similar response from the audience, who could not get enough.
The show opens with an atypical preset, where Twomey’s character comes on and adjusts the set by raising some curtains at the back of the stage. Whilst a seemingly trivial task, she purposefully left some of them at peculiar heights, or even slanted, which got a general laugh from the audience. It may seem like a simple detail, but by starting the show this way, the audience was already in a good mood to receive the comedy much quicker. As for Steele’s character, her playfulness with voices and tones as well as large accentuated movements grabbed the attention of the crowd immediately and got them laughing at the peculiarity of her person, whilst also getting them genuinely quite intrigued by her.
All in all, this show delivered a perfect harmony between comedy and finesse, with its actors all commanding the audience’s attention with a single glance. It was perfectly clear that everything was calculated, with no detail being overlooked or made obsolete, a true testament to the show’s successful writing and direction.
Filumena runs at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre until 26th October. For tickets and more information, you can follow the link here.
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ (4*)
Gifted tickets in return for an honest review | photography by Jack Merriman
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