Alan Williams and Simon Russell Beale. Photo by Helen Murray.

The Invention of Love by Tom Stoppard – Hampstead Theatre, London

Director Blanche McIntyre’s programme notes reveal an infectious enthusiasm for ‘The Invention of Love’, a play which inspired her when she saw its National Theatre premiere in 1997. It is certainly time Tom Stoppard’s most esoteric play, which has not been seen on a major stage since, was revived. The original production, directed by Richard Eyre, was notable for the performances of John Wood as the older A.E. Housman, and Paul Rhys as the younger. When McIntyre secured Simon Russell Beale for the former role, she couldn’t really lose. Whatever the long-term merits of the play he can fill the theatre on his own, and it is hard to imagine how watching him could ever be a waste of time.

Morgan Large’s low-key set is a series of dark backgrounds, reminiscent of a giant blackboard containing the cast of academics and their worlds. A vortex is chalked in the centre, which fits the fantastical structure of a play which begins in the Underworld. Russell Beale is being ferried across the Styx by Charon (Alan Williams), who has the manner and earthy sarcasm of a London cab driver. From the brink he reviews his life, as a renowned classical scholar who also became a successful poet. He is, of course, remembered only as the latter. Stoppard’s play, the result of three years researching the Oxford of the 1870s, is a full immersion in the intellectual movements and academic rivalries of the era. This is the sort of material only Stoppard, with his one-off ability to make the esoteric amusing, would contemplate. But it is not a complete success. Chunks of the play involve key figures – Walter Pater, Benjamin Jowett, John Ruskin, Mark Pattison – making pronouncements to one another while playing invisible games of croquet or billiards. There is a lot of fun to be had for the performers, and an excellent cast – Stephen Boxer as Jowett, Jonnie Broadbent as Pater, Dominic Rowan as Ruskin, Peter Landi as Pattison – take full advantage. But, while these scenes are amusing, Stoppard never convinces us we are watching real people rather than animated historical personages.

The play works much better when it brings characters together to talk about what really matters. It takes until the second half for it to become clear the play is about disappointed love. Gay relationships were idolised in theory at Oxford as ‘Greek love’, despised by society in practice. Russell Beale observes the progress of his younger self, played by Matthew Tennyson, at Oxford as he falls in love with the resoundingly heterosexual Moses Jackson (Ben Lloyd-Hughes). This unrequited passion haunted him for the rest of his life. Oscar Wilde (a brilliantly tough performance from Dickie Beau) appears, making the case for standing up for what you believe. Housman, who took the opposite approach, suffered as Wilde did but in an entirely different, private way. The scenes in which he talks to Tennyson, who gives a very confident portrayal, are fascinating and moving, personal feelings coded in metaphors about the classical texts that were Housman’s life. There are also affecting scenes with Jackson, who is played with great subtlety by Lloyd-Hughes – particularly the moment when he tells Housman he understands how he feels, and that he doesn’t mind.

The star of the show, however, is undoubtedly Simon Russell Beale. There is no actor better at simply talking to the audience, immediately making everyone forget that he is speaking lines. In every role he plays he talks directly to us, which is an incredibly rare thing to achieve as a performer and harder still when the lines are, on the surface, wilfully oblique. Russell Beale is completely at ease from start to finish, and he can take the audience wherever he pleases. ‘The Invention of Love’ is a flawed play which, as Stoppard acknowledges, would not be written now – not least because of its almost entirely male case, which feels like a relic from the last century. However, it is a highly intelligent and humane work, written with all the right intentions, and noone who enjoys supreme stagecraft will want to miss the great Russell Beale at work.