By Natalie Bennett

When Aleksandr Nikolaevich Ostrovsky’s A Family Affair was sent to the censor in Moscow in 1849 it was immediately banned as “an insult to the Russian merchant class”. But is it insulting satire, or is it insulting farce?

That’s something Serdar Bilis’s new production at the Arcola can’t quite decide. At its best, this production is glorious, astonishingly modern-sounding, laugh-until-you-cry farce. That stream emerges best in the fast-moving second half of this production, in which the author engages in some early play with the interaction between story, stage and actor.

In the first half, however, you are reminded that this was Ostrovsky’s first play, and as a young writer he felt the need to make his points again, and again, and then again. The satire — which probably was fresh then — drags rather now. Sometimes the cast seem to be trying to produce greatly flawed human characters of tragedy, rather than finding the laughs that are undoubtedly here.

The tale might have been new and shocking in the 19th century, but after another 150 years of capitalism is hardly surprising: there’s a merchant who’s made his mint, the wife who struggles to keep up with their new state, and the spoilt daughter Lipochka (Sally Leonard) who practices three-year-old-style tantrums that can only be stopped by a promise from her mother such as “I’ll buy you some new earrings.”

The merchant hatches a scheme, with the help of a sleazy clerk, Rispolozhensky, (played with relish by Glyn Pritchard), to defraud all of his creditors. Meanwhile a come-down-in-the-world quasi-aristrocratic matchmaker, Ustinya (Jane Bertish in a standout comic performance), tries to find Lipochka the dashing young army officer she craves. But another member of the household has other ideas…

At times Nick Dear’s translation is gratingly modern – maybe there was a phrase in 19th-century Russian that translates as “technical jargon”, but it still sounds a bit 21st-century to these ears. But whatever the language, it’s clear that Ostrovsky was portraying family relationships still entirely familiar today. Lipochka a giddy, overgrown 20-year-old teenager, spits at her mother Agrafena (Rosemary McHale) that she’s an “ignorant old bag” whose “ideas are all out of date”.


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The production is enlivened with original music by Sally Davis and Martina Schwartz, which works particularly well with the dance scenes and those in which the actors step out of character to speak directly to the audience late in the play.

Some critics over the past two centuries have dismissed Ostrovsky as too particular to his time and place, but except perhaps for the focus on vodka consumption – particularly favoured by Ustinya, Rispolozhensky and the peasant maid Fominishna (Eve Pearce) — these are universal stories, and when played to full comic effect, considerably more than a period piece, although the glorious costumes here certainly add to the enjoyment. If only they’d cut the length and found all the laughs…

The production continues until January 13 at the Arcola, with online booking. Ostrovsky is best known for The Storm.