A Little History of the World, Watermill Theatre, Newbury

reviewed for The Times, 22 July 2015

 

Before he was a British intellectual personality, EH Gombrich was a penniless post-doctoral student in Vienna in 1935. Earning a few schillings from a publisher, Gombrich set up as a translator — until he declared the first book sent to him too intellectually shoddy to be worth his time.

And so we watch his publisher friend Otto (Richard Ede) tear his hair out as Ernst (Alasdair Buchan) walks us through his alternative publishing proposal, a complete intellectual history of the world, written for children, to be completed in six weeks. Some ambition — although of course it was hit. Jess Mabel Jones adds a glorious energy as Gombrich’s future wife Ilse and with this talented trio at the helm, we’re in for a cute, inventive and joyous walk through European cultural history.

That’s definitely European history — despite the universalist title — but our cast aren’t shy of interrogating Gombrich’s more conservative assumptions. Those who adored Gombrich as a Cold War warrior, a humanist classical liberal, will glance askance at the Marxist-Leninism given full reign in the writer Toby Hulse’s satire on American capitalism. However, it is true to Gombrich’s early work and to the long shadow of a malnourished childhood in the wake of the First World War.

Yet while there’s darkness here, there’s also much light. Clambering up ladders, tumbling through sword fights, Jones excels at physical comedy and she has able partners in Ede and Buchan’s bombastic elasticity.

There’s something of the Reduced Shakespeare Company in this show and at times the odd detail of history can feel sloppy (it’s but a slip of the tongue, but Franz Ferdinand was fairly certainly the Austrian Emperor’s nephew, not his son). Yet in the Watermill Theatre’s bucolic setting, ducks nesting by the river, it’s impossible not to enjoy an evening’s feisty storytelling. Take your teenagers.