THE MISANTHROPE
Comedy Theatre
By SIMON WROE

As long as there are people in the world, there will be reasons to hate them. 

That was the opinion of Moliere’s Misanthrope in 17th-century France, and it has been borne out, into the 21st century at least, by Martin Crimp’s rewrite.

The bugbears’ uniforms have changed – Crimp’s au courant version makes thinly veiled references to Simon Cowell and David Cameron (“his flat bland mask of pity”) – but the themes remain the same. 

In a nutshell: the human race is a tribe of spineless, vacuous, sycophantic hypocrites who should all be destroyed.

Damian Lewis gives an assured, pugnacious performance as the playwright Alceste, the misanthrope of the title who, despite his principles, is madly infatuated with Jennifer (Keira Knightley), an American film star.

Jennifer embodies most of the traits Alceste so vehemently loathes; those faults she lacks personally she inspires in her celebrity entourage of two-faced girlfriends and lascivious males. Knightley, playing a trans-Atlantic version of her public self, is a much better actor than Pirates of the Caribbean might have led you to believe. 

Her delivery is a mite too formal on occasion, but she bounces nicely off Nicholas Le Prevost’s agent, Alexander, and Tim McMullan’s wonderfully smarmy critic.

At times the script is too clever for its own good. 

The “I feel like I’m in a 17th-century play” jokes are excessive and the rhyming couplets, though on the whole successful, are sometimes over elaborate. Can anybody rhyme ugly four-syllable words with one another without sounding like a politically conscious rapper of dubious talent? 

These quibbles detract little from Thea Sharrock’s hugely enjoyable production, however. 

It is so much fun one almost forgets there are no likeable characters. 

We grow frustrated with Alceste because he is so intractable, and the rest are morally bankrupt. 

Which leads us to the most pressing misanthropy of all: our own. 

Until March 13
0844 209 1805