The play is set in 1950s France, in a chateau inhabited by the fabulously wealthy and the fatuously bored. To pass the time, they’re putting on a show – Marivaux’s The Double Inconstancy to be precise – but art is bleeding into life and vice versa. The feckless Count, the instigator of the whole affair, pressgangs their young governess into joining their company and soon finds his head turned by her fresh charms. This is to the consternation of his wife the Countess, who seeks solace in the arms of her own lover, and also of his official mistress Hortensia who sees her shakier position undermined.
Fortunately, life isn’t just a rehearsal, for a Marivaux play or otherwise – the novelty of these scenes soon wears off – but unfortunately, the direction the play takes is problematically dark, maliciously so, and not even the considerable talents of Edward Bennett can pull off this deviation. He plays Hero, an old friend of Tiger’s who is permanently sozzled and prone to periods of reflection in amongst the desperation and destruction he wreaks, guided to dastardly deeds by the manipulations of others but pulling too far from the world of the first act.