theatre

It is a truth universally acknowledged that a single man in possession of a large fortune must be a yuppie. At least that was the case in late 1980s drama as epitomised by Caryl Churchill in her city comedy Serious Money, which dragged swathes of city-types through the doors, apparently eager to see themselves mercilessly pilloried.

"It was wrong to marry for money, but silly to marry without it" was how Lord David Cecil summed up Jane Austen's view of marriage. She was acutely aware that while manners maketh (wo)man, money made things a whole lot easier. Similar notions are at the heart of Congreve's The Way of the World, written more than 100 years before Austen picked up her pen. It would take most of this page to detail the intricacies of the plot of this great Restoration comedy, but suffice it to say, it's as much about business affairs as affairs of the heart.

In Phyllida Lloyd's National Theatre production, starring Geraldine McEwan (above right), Anthony Ward's glorious costumes and set designs allude to the early Sixties. In the Birmingham Rep production, the action is placed in the mid-1980s. Its director, Bill Alexander, thought long and hard about how to make this immensely complicated play more accessible to a wide audience. "I thought about the Twenties and Thirties, but the Eighties seemed the decade most similar to the Hobbesian doctrine of enlightened self-interest by which most of Congreve's characters live. The Eighties scorn of idealism and the justifying of appetite and greed matches the play's anti-sentimental view of love and marriage and the pragmatic view of romance."

Happily, he and designer Ruari Murchison have avoided modish cliches like bleeping mobile phones and flying champagne corks. Both production teams know that dressing for success will only get you so far.

`The Way of the World' is at Birmingham Rep (0121-236 4455) and in repertory at the National Theatre, London (0171-928 2252)