by Jonathan Grant & Nirmal Grewal

This is a play about the pimp, the poet and the paradox. Charles Baudelaire (Will Tosh) is the heir to a handsome fortune and has fashionable society at his beckoning in 19th-century Paris. Yet, in true intelligentsia style, and au fait with the times, he rebels against conventionality and takes a mistress, a muse for his poetry, choosing one who is an ex-prostitute of Creole origin at that.

Baudelaire is a poet, aspiring yet failing, and The Pimp, now at Kennington’s White Bear Theatre, is, prima facie, the story of his struggles to publish his works – considered obscene for the age. Yet his liaison dangerous, with the self-destructive Jeanne (Lara Agar-Stoby), and the actions and reactions of Paris’ opulent classes, provides the interesting and substantive part of this story.

Superbly written, full of Wilde-like witticisms and aphorisms that are sharp enough to peel words back to contextual reality, the dialogues between the cast, also including Caroline Aupick (Anna Lindup), Charles despairing mother, and the aptly named Narcisse Desire Ancelle (Timothy Dodd) are well delivered, with a delightful depth of intelligence. The frustrated poet himself, who, with each desperate attempt to cut loose from the privileged class he belongs merely serves to tighten that bond on which he depends so heavily, clearly understands his position.

The characters are acutely defined in true Oscar Wilde tradition. Ex-prostitute Jeanne is a maverick who, after claiming she’s “lived on the streets and the world that put (her) there is a world of contracts” enters a contract with Baudelaire that ultimately breaks her spirit far more than the streets ever could. Ancelle, the self-proclaimed “crusader for the values of wealth against anarchy” and firm proponent of double-entry book-keeping, who has a self-destroying penchant for black prostitutes, is a staunch traditionalist.

Yet, while well-defined, none of these characters are inherently good or inherently bad, and each one becomes too obviously a parody of themselves to ever warrant the audiences support, pity or hate. Moreover, this stereotyping shatters any attempt by the playwright, Dic Edwards, to comment on the racism of a bygone age, and left this audience-member wondering first whether the treatment of racism in this context was appropriate, then second whether further commentary on this issue in this age is needed when, in our own time, we still have so many social divides to bridge and ills to cure.

Stunning period costume in a classy design is perhaps, however, a saving grace for some. See this play you like the wit of Wilde. Don’t if you despair at hatchet racist commentary or crude characterisations.

The production continues until May 7 at The White Bear Kennington. Box Office: 020-77939193.