Don Juan in Soho, theatre review: David Tennant has swagger and twinkly charm

There are two reasons to see this revival of Patrick Marber’s racy play — David Tennant and Adrian Scarborough. Tennant is obviously the big draw in the title role, and he's a charismatic blend of swagger and agility, exuding twinkly charm and leaping around the stage like a tipsy gazelle. Alongside him, as his hangdog chauffeur and fixer, Scarborough is a delight.

It’s Tennant who dominates. He brings an exciting physicality and air of sexy mischief to the odious DJ — i.e. Don Juan, though it’s not hard to imagine him spinning a few unlistenable tunes in some terrible, expensive nightclub. While he professes to be a radical feminist, a gag along the lines of ‘Do you want to see my new twelve-inch?’ would be just his kind of thing.

He’s a callous, debauched figure, who describes himself as the ‘Gandhi of the gang bang’. How funny you find that, or the suggestion that he’d fly to Alaska to fool around with a ‘furry little Eskimo lady’, will serve as a good indication of how much you might relish this two-hour show.

Marber’s adaptation of Molière’s classic morality play premiered eleven years ago. Now he’s updated it, and he also directs. Perhaps he should have relocated it, given that Soho is these days hardly a byword for seediness. Instead there are the inevitable quips about Donald Trump and the hollow patriotism of 2017’s politics. This is a world of selfies, fake tan and almond milk lattes.

Yet the writing never feels fierce enough. The most enjoyable scene, also the most outrageous, involves DJ chatting up a new bride whose husband he’s put in a coma. At the same time he’s being pleasured under a blanket by another woman. There’s a sense here of real danger, of a reckless bastard who would ‘do it with anything — a hole in the ozone layer’. But there are too many moments when the play lacks bite and seems crude or even a bit dull.

Until June 10, Wyndham's Theatre

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