What's On, November 13, 1991, by Roger Foss
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What a delightful comedy but what a pity it is running at 
the Piccadilly for only a short season. Natalia Makarova and 
Robert Powell play the sort of crazy Russians who kiss you 
on the shoulder, gaily smash vodka glasses against the wall, 
wrap themselves in the Tsarist flag or stick ceremonial 
swords down their trouser legs. But then the Grand Duchess 
Tatiana Petrovna and Prince Mikhail Alexandrovitch are true-
blue white aristocrats from St. Petersburg. And they can 
perhaps be forgiven for holding on to their national 
customs, however quirky or snobbish, having escaped the 
Lubyanka and the Bolshevik firing squads.

By 1932, when the play takes place, the married couple are 
on their uppers and virtually Franc-less in Paris. Here they 
make ends meet by either selling the family baubles or 
shoplifting artichokes. Like so many exiled Russian aristos 
who fled the slaughter, they are forced to slide down the 
social scale and actually work for a living. In this case, 
ironically, in the household of Charles Arbeziat, a wealthy 
Parisian bourgeois socialist, where the Grand Duchess 
becomes a maid and the Prince a butler.

Jacques Deval's 1930s smash hit (it was filmed with Charles 
Boyer and Claudette Colbert) opens on a somewhat creaky 
plot-laying note which also asks us to accept that the 
paupered Prince actually has access to the Tsar's fortune 
but won't touch it until the Romanoffs are back on the 
imperial throne. And the play rests on the romantic premise 
that the Russian Royals were holy innocents who never 
descended into anything remotely dishonourable.

But the comic froth starts rising as soon as the duo charm 
their way into the "nouveaux riches" and once the comic 
possibilities of the role reversals take off. What finally 
emerges from this superbly crafted, agreeable and thoroughly 
entertaining period piece is comedy which revolves around 
near-farcical table turning, such as when the bolshie Soviet 
oil boss comes to dinner, combined with the rather more 
serious themes of patriotism and nobility.

Patrick Garland's impeccable direction captures just the 
right tone of sophistication throughout, he never milks the 
laughs and he utilises some voguish costumes and swanky 
sets. The casting of the great Russian star ballerina 
Natalia Makarova as the Duchess was an inspired choice. She 
is imperial and funny without ever once becoming imperious, 
while her little impromptu dance around the living room at 
the end of the first act is a joy to watch. No wonder the 
Arbeziat's young pup of a son George (played by Alexis 
Denisof) thinks she's the bees knees and goes around saying: 
"Ya lublu vas" all the time! However it is Robert Powell who 
holds the whole thing together with some quite masterly 
brushstroke acting. Fallen on hard times and buttling for a 
social climber he may be, yet he's always every inch a 
Russian Prince.



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