Observer - 8/12/96 - Michael Coveney

Molière's The Learned Ladies in the RSC's Barbican Pit is an intelligent, stylish production by Steven Pimlott that fails to amuse all that much. The stinging verse comedy is given in a sturdy Edwardian prose version (by A.R. Waller) that slows things down, as do some excellent sub-Sondheim songs by Jason Carr. Sue Blane's superb design of piled books and swags transforms the characters from seventeenth-century fig into more modern dress.

Great work from John Quayle as the reactionary paterfamilias, and from Jane Gurnett and Niamh Cusack, the one dreamy and ambivalent, the other deadly and bitter, as sisters divided in love and erudition. Top treat is Roger Allam's pretentious poet filtered through the Boltonian accent and intonations of Ian McKellen.

What's On - 11/12/96 - Roger Foss

Throughout the ages, men have done their utmost to keep women in the kitchen (or the convent) and out of the study. And however much Steven Pimlott's production of The Learned Ladies tries to disguise the fact, Molière was clearly no exception. His last but one play, here performed in a 1910 blank verse translation by A R Weller, is basically all about poking fun at middle class women who step beyond the traditional bounds of femininity and marriage and start concerning their tiny minds with masculine pursuits like science philosophy and literature.

Philaminte has turned her bourgeois household into an academy where two of her daughters, Armande and Bélise, flirt with cultural affairs and swoon over poetry rather than eligible bachelors. Meanwhile, her husband Chrysale dithers in his smoking jacket about who Henriette, their third and less intellectually inclined daughter, is to marry.

To be fair the dim Chrysale is also a figure of fun: a classic worm who turns against his domineering spouse and who thinks that the main reason for having a thick volume of Plutarch is to press his collars. But there's no denying the main laughs are to be had at the expense of posh ladies who not only foolishly recite the latest philosophy in 17th century sound-bites, but sack the housemaid for the crime of uttering a split infinitive.

To make them look even more air-headed, the star turn at their soirees is a completely bogus poet, Trissotin, who entertains in plagiarised verse while keeping one eye on Henriette's hand and the family fortune. At times it feels as if you've entered a time-warp where intellectual women are at best something to snigger at and at worst a threat to the social hierarchy of the ancient regime.

But the play takes a different course when the parents battle over who should marry Henriette - Trissotin or the ardent aristocrat Clitandre. And it is in the second act that Pimlott's hilarious production moves into modern dress and even further away from the conventional high style associated with the playwright's comedies, dealing with social snobbery and the position of women in much harsher terms.

The acting is tremendous, especially Jane Gurnett's Henriette, who sees through the pretensions of her gushing sister Belise (Alison Fiske in top form) and defies the overbearing but eventually speechless Philaminte (Caroline Blakiston). Roger Allam's oily lank-haired poet is transformed into a terrifyingly malevolent force, while John Quayle gives a delightfully underplayed comic performance as the stock husband on a losing streak.

Elsewhere, the spectacularly unfunny knockabout scene changes and Jason Carr's cabaret-style numbers seem as if they have been tacked on to keep you entertained. Pity, because one feels that Molière's ladies who lunch on literature have more than enough to say for themselves.

Evening Standard - 4/12/96 - Nick Curtis

Hard as director Steven Pimlott tries to downplay the misogyny of Molière's satire on salon life, The Learned Ladies derisively suggests that women and wisdom just don't mix.

Through an artfully stylised production, which shifts from period to modern dress and uses a witty, non-rhyming Edwardian translation and arch modern songs, Pimlott tries to put an ironic, historically-aware spin on the sexism. It's an understandable, enjoyable but somewhat cowardly approach.

True, Molière's targets are broad. He decries pretence in both sexes, and gives weak men a rough comic ride. But his strongest venom is reserved for the ladies, and the cruel and unreasonable fun he has at their expense remains spryly amusing, In a retrospectively subversive, non-PC kind of way.

When Henriette (a demure but dignified Jane Gurnett) chooses marriage over mental exertion, her would-be intellectual female relatives are stunned. Her sister Armande (a lethally spiky Niamh Cusack) is irritated that Henriette's intended is her own spurned suitor, Clitandre.

Their martinet mother Philaminte (Caroline Blakiston) is enraged, since she wants to shackle Henriette to a greedy, tenth-rate poet she adores (Roger Allam, beautifully blending menace and self-satisfied smarm).

Philaminte's quivering sister Belise (a superb Alison Fiske) vainly fancies herself the real object of Clitandre's desire. Their intransigence provokes Philaminte's henpecked husband Chrysale into a hilarious attempt to reassert himself as cock of the roost.

John Quayle's mild, mumbly Chrysale is a sublimely funny creation, but his muted delivery of the pivotal speech in favour of female subjugation feels like a cop-out. Jason Carr's sub-Sondheim songs and the post-interval change to modern costume look increasingly like piecemeal attempts by Pimlott to disguise unfashionable material, and the mimed scene changes are a ghastly mistake.

All that said, the final image of Pimlott's sedately funny, very well-acted production scores a powerful coup, as the blackout robs the bereft Philaminte of her last words.

The Times - 6/12/96 - Jeremy Kingston

This is a curious play to be given a major production at this time in the history of the world. Molière's ridicule of the intellectual ambitions of women has its place in the history of ideas, and the programme notes go to some pains to assure us that we do not have to see the play as an anti-feminist satire. But Molière introduces no female character who is not a) disguising her ignorance behind an inflated style of talk, or b) renouncing all interest in science, philosophy and literature because what a woman should do is devote herself to a man.

This is not to say that, Steven Pimlott's production, transferred from Stratford, contains no pleasures along the way. Philaminte, wife of the mild-tempered philistine Chrysale, has selected the self-satisfied, transparently trashy Trissotin (Roger Allam at his most unctuous) as her pet poet and is determined that he shall marry her younger daughter, Henriette (Jane Gurnett). The girl is in love with a decent chap who once courted her elder sister, Armande (Niamh Cusack), who may now be posturing as a learned lady but is just a jealous woman at heart.

Alison Fiske is enjoyably absurd as Philaminte's sister-in-law Bélise, and John Quayle, in his first season with the RSC, is endearingly apologetic as Chrysale, the gentle worm that turns.

For some arcane reason Pimlott begins the play in costume and changes everyone into modern dress for the second half, presumably to suggest that we have these feminist posers with us today. At the close Caroline Blakiston's hitherto implacable Philaminte stares in dismay at the daughter whose proper care she has neglected and gazes at us as if for guidance. But what could we say to a woman who has been forcing unwelcome marriages on her children, and claims to have seen men in the moon?