For Love or Money at Rose Theatre

This is another one that I almost at Rose Theatre because of their bad publicity. I was in the theatre cafe for something else when I saw a pile of leaflets for the show and I recognised Barrie Rutter immediately. I had seen a few Northern Broadsides' touring productions in recent years and that was enough to convince me to see another one. I went for my usual place, A32, and paid £30 to do so.

For Love or Money was an adaption of a French farce, Lesage’s Turcaret apparenty, which meant that I knew what to expect, something funny that would not be too demanding on the intellect. And it was just that.

The situation was a young woman living beyond here means and surviving on the generosity of one admirer, a dubious banker much older than her, while being fleeced by a younger man, a rascal at best, that she had fallen for. That man had a partner in rascality and there were a few other maids and such like.

Most of the humour, and there was a lot of it, came from the larger than life characters who behaved extravagantly and ridiculously. The situation got more interesting too as wives turned up, people pretended to be other people and illicit encounters were recalled.

I went to see For Love or Money for some simple good humoured entertainment and that is exactly what I got.