A BUSY DAY

BRISTOL OLD VIC

Fanny Burney is famous for having a mastectomy without anaesthetic and being chased round Kew Gardens by a maddened George III. However, she was also a comic novelist and playwright who inspired Jane Austen and won the admiration of Richard Brinsley Sheridan and Dr. Johnson. Yet her magnum opus languished undiscovered and unstaged in a dusty American vault for nigh on 200 years. A Busy Day - the play which she spent ten years crafting and which never made it to the London stage due to the untimely intervention of the Napoleonic wars - is her masterpiece of social comedy, and is finally being presented in its full glory.

The play is a sophisticated variation on the traditional themes of both comic theatre and 18^th century writing: star-crossed lovers whose romance is almost destroyed by the social mores of the times. In a plot too intricate to recount, Burney plunges her characters into a social whirl which mercilessly satirises both the nouveau riche and the snobbish aristocracy, whilst bringing the story to the reconciliatory ending - complete with paean of praise to London - which the stalls demand. As a result, A Busy Day is not only an extremely funny play, but also a fascinating slice of social commentary on the capital of the Empire at the dawn of the nineteenth century.

Bristol Old Vic's is not the first production of Burney's play, despite the hype which suggests otherwise. The play was originally staged by the Bristol-based company Show of Strength, who brought their lively and energetic production to London in 1994. Director Jonathan Church owes one or two debts of gratitude to this fringe premiere, not least of which is its discovery of Ian Kelly, who here reprises his astoundingly flamboyant and perfectly-timed performance as the young coxcomb Frank, outfopping Lawrence Llwellyn-Bowen and outcamping Graham Norton. Church's production is paced slightly more languidly than the Show of Strength version, as he allows his stable of fine comedy actors plenty of time for comic business amongst the operatic decadence of Ruari Murchison's sets.

Amidst a highly-skilled ensemble, one of the more noteworthy performances is Sara Crowe's Miss Percival. Ms Crowe may never win any awards for outstanding theatrical range, but she can play the ditzy neurotic to perfection. The incapacity of Googie Withers - who should have played the arch-snob Lady Wilhelmina and will probably be back on duty by the time this review is published - allowed Stephanie Fayerman to deliver two delightful and diverse comedy performances as haughty Lady Wil and Deborah, Eliza's cheerily earthy maid. The production's only slight hiccup lies in the accents of the 'working class made good' Watts family. Although the Old Vic is well-known for its resident ghosts, one had not expected the ghost of Dick Van Dyke to be amongst them.

After spending so long on the 'missing' list, A Busy Day should become a firm fixture in the theatrical canon. It is sharp and witty enough to entertain a West End audience, deep and subtle enough to satisfy slumming intellectuals, and offers exactly the range of characters that most am-dram societies need to keep their leading lights happy. And after a veritable rash of Austen adaptations, it is a blessed relief to witness a piece of early 19^th Century writing which was actually conceived for the stage, particularly when it turns out to be such a gem.

TOBY O'CONNOR MORSE