The Constant Couple

Photographs: Gregory Costanzo

If TONY did a feature on “Playwrights to Watch Under 30,” I’d recommend George Farquhar. He will always qualify, having died at 29 in 1707. And his 1699 hit The Constant Couple—currently receiving its three-centuries-overdue New York premiere at the Pearl Theatre Company—remains a fresh take on wayward youth and erotic deceit, far surpassing most of what passes for romantic comedy today.

The sympathies of this hip yet faithful production lie less with the play’s traditional star role—the clueless rake Sir Harry Wildair (played by the adroit Bradford Cover)—than with the more shaded and conflicted Lady Lurewell, who still pines for the strapping young student who ran off with her teenage virginity, and who is radiantly interpreted by Rachel Botchan as a modern, self-governing woman unashamed of her desires. The Restoration text can be an earful, but director Jean Randich and her expert designers elucidate key plot points through inventive costuming, lighting and music. Randich’s smart, elegant staging highlights the female perspective on Farquhar’s world of topsy-turvy sexcapades, where good men are hard to find and women must be “Machiavels” to guard their honor. If not for all the pimping and premarital fornication, you might even mistake it for Jane Austen.

—Garrett Eisler