Bartholomew Fair at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, London is as giddy as a carousel

The follies and frailties of humankind remain pretty constant across the centuries, and as does their comic potential. Yet the satirical humour of the day can prove tricky out of context, once familiarity recedes. What might a Jacobean theatregoer make of Little Britain or BBC Radio 4’s impressionist comedy Dead Ringers? How much would they pick up and how much would pass them by?

Conversely, watching Ben Jonson’s 1614 Bartholomew Fair at 400 years distance is a little like experiencing events through a veil. Original audiences would have been familiar with the fair — a vast, infamous London event, home to transactions of all kinds both above and below board — and Jonson jumps off that to create a huge, sprawling and carnivalesque picture of London life, a microcosm of society as a whole. His plot is as giddy as a carousel but basically consists of mixing several groups of fair-goers with the fair workers (and tricksters) to learn lessons. There is certainly much here that translates — hypocrisy, snobbery and thievery don’t date, neither does the point that everyone has flaws — but the setting and specifics often don’t quite land.

That’s a challenge for a contemporary director. Blanche McIntyre does an impressive job paring down the knotty, four-hour, 30-character plot into two and a half hours of madness, delivered by a 12-strong cast. Her good-humoured modern-dress staging pulses with energy and wraps the audience in the action: actors climb over spectators and ply their wares among them. But even so, it does feel as though everyone is having to work very hard to make it sing.

The best enjoyment comes from watching a fine cast speedily switch through multiple roles. The piece is peppered with good comic performances: Zach Wyatt is spectacularly silly as a rich young toff, Forbes Masson is very droll as the world-weary servant in charge of him, and Dickon Tyrrell is enjoyably pompous as the justice of the peace, who disguises himself to spy out crimes and finds out far more than he anticipated. It’s the zest and relish in performance, from both Jonson and the cast, that pleases most in this hard-working but sometimes hard-going show.

★★★☆☆

To October 12, shakespearesglobe.com