Where Figaro Does It Again

The Barber of Seville / The Marriage of Figaro / A Mother's Guilt by Pierre-Augustin Caron de Beaumarchais
My rating: 3 of 5 stars

[This review is focusing on the third of the plays--I couldn't find an entry for just the one play.]

So--it's fine.

In context, in its time and milieu, this is probably pretty entertaining. I'm guessing, cuz i dunno. But the conventions seem odd now. French theatre of the time (based on nothing more than these three Beaumarchais plays and a few Moliere plays) seems mostly like angry people storming back and forth across the stage, arguing and/or crying, with whispering and eavesdropping interspersed randomly. The servants, notably Figaro here, conspire to make a happy ending (while promoting themselves, generally) though it feels like Figaro is given credit for being more brilliant than he ever proves to be. He's a schemer and a manipulator, and he does succeed in figuring out everyone's secrets so he can prevent a (worse) schemer from hurting his family, so I'll give him that credit. But he's no Sherlock or anything.

(I'm trying to think of a modern equivalent of the Figaro character, someone who discovers secrets and uses tricks and persuasion and lies to make it all turn out for the good and I've got nothing. I can only come up with villains, plotters, and backstabbers. Maybe the Long John Silver character on "Black Sails"? I dunno.)

The ending of this is pretty good, though the difficulties are all overcome in quick succession without a lot of drama. People shout at each other a lot in these plays, but then forgive each other and fall back in love very easily. I guess Shakespeare used the same trope, so it's got a history...

Having read all three, I guess my takeaway is that the prevailing mood in these comedies is anger, with the happy bit coming about a page or a minute from the end. I don't love that.

YMMV

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