Comic clockwork

Pinero’s comedy The Magistrate is a marvellous confection of shameful secrets and multiplying concealments. Agatha, a beautiful widow of 36, has trimmed five years from her age in order to bag her second husband, Aeneas Posket, an agreeably pompous magistrate. Her subterfuge is imperilled by her 19-year-old son who must pretend to be 14 in order to make the maths work. To please his mother, the young buck behaves like a child at home. But elsewhere he pleases himself. He keeps a private room at the racy Hotel des Princes in town. One evening, he persuades his weakling stepfather to accompany him for a night of drunken antics. The police swoop on the hotel and Posket has to run pell-mell from the officers of the law. Agatha, visiting the same venue on an innocent errand, is caught up in the raid. In court the following morning, Posket must pass judgment on his own wife. Back at home, he faces her furious indignation but she, in turn, is compelled to confront her prenuptial fibs.

The script runs like a piece of comic clockwork and delivers gags at the dependable rate of two per minute. Pinero had the intellect of a great jurist, and he crams his play with moments of subtle and delicate comedy. For example, Agatha excuses her lies by claiming altruistic motives: she merely wished to spare her future husband the painful awareness of too many years lived without the benefit of his loving companionship.

Timothy Sheader’s crisp direction suffers from a couple of technical lapses. Tricky scene changes are masked by a troupe of dancers who keep blundering on stage to kick up their legs and perform irrelevant comic lyrics written by Richard Stilgoe. The show would zip along faster without these longueurs.