Times, 6 November 1991, by Jeremy Kingston.
"Tovarich"
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Jacques Deval's runaway Thirties' success contains two quite 
different styles of play, awkwardly joined at the intervals. 
The less interesting of the two tells of a couple of 
impoverished Tsarist exiles, a prince and his wife, an 
imperial grand duchess, holed up in their shabby Paris room 
and reduced to their last centimes. Their predicament starts 
the play, and much of the dialogue consists of variations on 
"Fancy a niece of the Tsar reduced to this.". If the 
subsequent scenes were not an improvement, the show would be 
a poor thing, especially after Prince Mikhail admits that he 
has four billion francs with the Banque de France. This 
colossal sum was entrusted to him by he late Tsar but 
Mikhail's innate nobility, supreme loyalty and the plot 
prevent him touching a sou until a crowned Tsar once more 
rules in Mother Russia. Robert Powell paces the stage like a 
caged leopard, Natalia Makarova's feet arch beautifully into 
her high heels, but the minutes tick past slowly. 

The curtain is lowered and rises again on Madame Arbeziat, 
the pouter-pigeon wife of a politician, both at their wits' 
end because their butler and parlour maid have stalked out. 
Mikhail and Tatiana apply for the job and charm their 
prospective employers with punctilious efficiency learned at 
the imperial court. The next two scenes, straddling the main 
interval, abound with joys, fuelled by the comic 
possibilities of culture shock and topsy-turvydom. The 
aristocrats become servants to the bourgeoisie and improve 
their marital relationship with tricks practised by the 
Romanov; the Arbeziat son and daughter fall in love with 
them, and the parents gurgle and preen. 

The writing, too, is vastly better: scenes are fluently 
constructed to give space to the permeations. The jokes are 
funny, and Patrick Garland's direction (first seen at 
Chichester) gets comic mileage from the contrast between the 
sober irony of Powell and Makarova and their socially 
uncertain employers. The comedy may rest on snobbery but it 
is done with charm, and the tone darts in and out of farce 
without splitting the fabric apart. The hands of Frances 
Cuka's Madame Arbeziat flutter like insane butterflies; 
Rowland Davies, her husband, puffs and goggles like a 
beached walrus. Alexis Denisof, their son, neatly captures 
the Thirties' arrogance of a callow young chap. 

In the final scene the sentiment of the opening returns, 
loaded now with serious thoughts: George Murcell appears as 
a commissar, eager for the four billion to keep the Ukraine 
from starving. The sparkle fades, though Makarova's curtain 
line is a treat. Still, a good half of the play is 
delightful, romantic and unexpectedly effective comedy.



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