The Fair Maid of the West, Swan Theatre review — joyously unfaithful adaptation updates Elizabethan play

“Not everything’s good because it’s old,” runs writer and director Isobel McArthur’s rueful prologue/apology at the start of her highly unfaithful adaptation of The Fair Maid of the West at the Swan Theatre in Stratford-upon-Avon. No excuses needed. McArthur has taken a seldom-staged Elizabethan play by Thomas Heywood firmly in hand, turning it into a lightly historical knees-up of a show, with all the spirit of her similarly iconoclastic breakout hit, Pride and Prejudice* (*sort of).

She has stuck to the play’s original setting in this Royal Shakespeare Company production: a rambunctious pub, where barmaid Liz (Amber James) charms and outwits a motley rabble of customers. But where her forebear Heywood was interested in Liz’s sexual virtue, echoing contemporary concerns about the chastity of another powerful single woman, Elizabeth I, here McArthur flips the script. Now it’s Liz’s wealthy would-be lover Spencer (Philip Labey) whose merit is called into question. After an excruciating attempted proposal (troubadours in silk pantaloons are involved), he learns he must earn her affections, not buy them.

But the play’s truest romance is between punter and pub. McArthur fills the timbers of the Swan Theatre with gleefully ahistorical tavern atmosphere: this boozy bunch wear leather jerkins but put Fleetwood Mac on the jukebox and eat pork scratchings as wonky remote-controlled rats scuttle among their feet. The message? The pub is an inclusive space where class differences are banished and outsiders welcomed in.

These themes don’t lose their bite, even when the scene shifts to Spain in the second act — and the pub-dwellers learn that they’re not the only ones who can dish out xenophobic stereotypes (jokes about their love of cricket and gravy feature heavily). Soon, the king of Spain shows up to reconcile this story’s lovers and thrill the audience with an unexpected (and joyfully anachronistic) gay romance.

It’s not sophisticated stuff, but nor were Heywood’s playhouse-filling comedies. This is broad, populist humour with a big heart, delivered by a sizeable cast who are visibly enjoying each other’s company. Emmy Stonelake is all bluff charm as Liz’s friend Clem, Tom Babbage gets belly laughs galore as garrulous pub regular Windbag and James shines as Liz, her fierce entrepreneurial spirit a welcome reminder that few Elizabethan women confined themselves to starching their ruffs and rouging their cheeks.

Sometimes, this fair maid strays so far from her origins that it’s hard to remember what all this silliness is in aid of. But a leatherbound, gold-tooled copy of the original play sits on the bar, centre stage, a reminder that the original is still there for anyone who chooses to seek it.

★★★★☆

To January 14, rsc.org.uk