Strutting on stage in a red and grey check suit, lounging in a plush armchair or thrusting in a scarlet posing pouch (yes, really) former Dr Who David Tennant owns the stage as the ultimate seducer Don Juan – or DJ as he’s renamed in Patrick Marber’s revised version of his own 2006 update of Moliere’s 17th century original.
The profligate son of an earl, DJ has, between the marriage ceremony and the end of the honeymoon, already cheated on (several times) – and tired of – the high-minded bride he pursued for two years. As his disgruntled, disapproving but surprisingly loyal, unpaid and constantly hungry chauffeur Stan (excellent Adrian Scarborough in charge of his database of twenty thousand conquests) observes, this incorrigible seducer (of men as well as women when the mood takes him) would “do it with anything, even a hole in the ozone layer”.
Warned by a spooky statue of Charles II that time is running out and he’s heading for hell, DJ still isn’t going to let anything curtail his pursuit of a life of debauched pleasure. At least, though, whilst berating a society without values, he’s honest about his own unconstrained hedonism.
Marber, who also directs, takes us from a swanky hotel, to a sedate gentleman’s club and on a flying rickshaw ride round night-time Soho and has added some topical Trump-themed jokes, too. But it’s Tennant who really makes this production – lithe, mercurial, and disconcertingly charismatic, he’s a self-confessed rotter one can’t take one’s eyes off.
Wyndhams, Charing Cross Road WC2H 0DA
Tube:- Leicester Square
Until 10th June 2017
£10.00 – £75.00 + Premium seats