The Way To Keep Him

This diverting period comedy is the 18th Century equivalent of today’s Cosmopolitan articles advising anxious women on how to keep their man. Performed in the suitably historical setting of the Court Room of Merchants’ Hall, it’s a slight but interesting tale of marital intrigue, in which Mr Lovemore (played cartoonishly by Tom Capper) is suspected of philandering by his neglected wife (Katie Crooks), who sets out to entrap him and convince him to mend his ways.

The company make good use of the tight space and wisely acknowledge the audience throughout, delivering many of their lines directly to individual punters with a nudge and a wink. Eli Murton plays the hedonist Mrs Belmour with a nice mix of domineering confidence and needling self-doubt, and Katie Crooks gives a controlled performance as the straight woman in a sea of grotesques. The rest of the cast tend towards farcical over-the-top performances that are a little too large for the space, particularly Robert Cann as the wonderfully named Sir Brilliant Fashion and Lynne Marie Haslam as the opinionated servant Muslin, who goes a bit too far in breaking the fourth wall and no longer seems to be in the room with the other characters.

Still, it’s an entertaining and intriguing piece, worth unearthing for the insight it gives into the sexual mores of the day. The conclusion is thankfully now offensive to most people’s ears, but the company are admirably unapologetic about it, allowing any judgment to take place after the players take their bows and exit through the grand mahogany doors.