Miserly with our time...

THE MISER, Royal Exchange, Manchester

NOW this is more like it: we are indebted to translators and adapters Braham Murray and Robert Cogo-Fawcett for this bit of Moliere — and I do mean “bit”.

Because the pair manage to retain all the main details in this Royal Exchange season-opener, but still get the curtain down by 9.20pm. With any play of this period — the late 1670s — that’s akin to sticking the play in top gear, turning up the boost and going for the fastest performance on record.

They are helped by director Helena Kaut-Howson, whose style seems mainly to be of the “keep going, and when in doubt, speak faster” variety.

This approach is both the biggest asset and initially the big problem in this trimmed and tightened Moliere.

Biggest asset because aeons of time aren’t spent including all the inconsequential details that usually bore audiences silly — and big problem, because for the first 20 minutes or so, the show is so manic it rather seems like you might think you have come in late and missed the first couple of scenes.

This is also true of some of the rather unbalanced cast: one or two need a shot of something, while others were way over the top and down the other side even before the lights went up.

But one man who judges the energetic approach beautifully is the miser of the title, Derek Griffiths.

Dressed in a long, shabby coat and with wisps of straggly hair on an otherwise bald head he looks every inch the sort of man who only bothers breathing because it’s free. Expertly playing his range of grimaces and physical comedy, he even interrogates the audience at one point about who nicked his cashbox.

Not all the other characters convert to this adrenaline-charged world quite so readily: Julian Chagrin as the coachman-cook seems like he would prefer not to have a speaking role, for instance

Ultimately, it’s all good fun, if you’re up to it . . .