Brilliant Suchet revives wicked tycoon

by Quentin Letts, 11 February 2005, Daily Mail, page 65 

(Duchess Theatre, London) Verdict: Dark comedy in Depression-era New York (4/5)

HOW easily an audience can sometimes find itself siding with, sliding towards, a villain and his frauds.

I swear it happened at the Duchess Theatre this week during a shiveringly good performance by David Suchet as a razor-nasty tycoon who bullies his softie of a son.

Mr Suchet is the grand turn, utterly compelling as a global wheelerdealer in this Terence Rattigan revival. At which you all cry: 'Terence Rattigan? Isn't he a forgotten relic of the pre-Angry Young Man era of theatre?' Well, it's true that the post-war trendies went off the late Rattigan and his bespoke crafting - but they were fools.

The Suchet character is a Hungarian-born financier called Gregor Antonescu. Think of a 1930s Robert Maxwell and you start to have the picture. He and his sidekick (a superbly snooty David Yelland) are on the run from investors and the New York Press during a stock market crash. He bolts to the last hole he knows - the basement flat of his estranged son Basil (a slightly jerky but endearing performance by Ben Silverstone).

Paternal love shrivels in the face of Antonescu's business imperatives. He passes off his na've, slimhipped son as his toyboy. This is done to impress a secretly gay industrialist (Colin Stinton) who is crucial to his schemes. When the ruse briefly succeeds, the audience is swept up in the adrenaline rush of the con. Would any father ever behave so horribly? Rattigan, not the marrying type, perhaps did not consider this a snag.

From the moment of Mr Suchet's entrance the evening fizzes. He twirls his wrists and flexes his magnificent voice. This is a huge performance, easily squashing the few moments of outdated dramatisation and the 'minor discrepancies', as conman Antonescu might say, in the plot's credibility.

With a brilliant performance, one forgets the moral demands of paternal decency all too quickly.

The show is directed competently by Maria Aitken. It is co-produced by Thelma Holt, in my experience a shrew. Despite her baleful presence, this is a satisfying, admirably old-fashioned evening's theatre.