Filumena is a play firmly grounded in the 1940s. From the male-dominated cast to the patriarchal focus on the Neapolitan family, Sean Mathias’ production chooses to reinforce the play’s original context without an awareness of how this will be received by a modern audience. It tells the story of Filumena, a mistress who pretends to be on her deathbed to ensure a marriage to Domenico, a wealthy patriarch who has refused to give her the time of day until this point. Originally written in Italian, the play is performed in translation. Mathias also seems to translate the Neapolitan context and Italian values into a confusing Anglo-Italian blend that leaves audiences bewildered and pretty underwhelmed.

My main issue with Filumena is the decision to stage it in 2024: the original script is filled with misogynistic quips about women’s bodies, and reduces female side characters to mere objects in comparison to their male counterparts, who are allowed to be funny in their own right. Instead of twisting the actors’ portrayal of these frequently problematic characters to show a different side to this play, watching Filumena felt a lot like watching a film straight from the 1940s itself.

“Any other merits are overshadowed by my experience watching it as a woman”

As a female reviewer, discussions that bordered on being pro-life advocacy and multiple characters being reduced to their breasts was definitely unsettling. It seemed as though Mathias, intentionally or not, wanted the audience to laugh at the spectacle of a woman existing, rather than how outdated these tropes now seem. This was my resounding issue with the production: any other merits are overshadowed by my experience watching it as a woman, especially in such a complex political environment regarding the female body.

On a purely theatrical level, the performances were solid across the board. That said, no actor did much to elevate their words or their role within the story for the overall production. Matthew Kelly’s Domenico had many successful comedic moments as he strutted across the stage in indignant rage. His snide comments are delivered perfectly, but I can’t help but feel that the sense of anger and shock about Filumena’s double life (of sorts) could have escalated more as the play progressed. Filumena’s schemes are clever but almost unbelievable, and the other characters’ reactions did not reflect this.

Domenico responds to the original lie at the start of the play with the same amount of shock and anger as he does at its conclusion, when he finds out that he has three sons with Filumena – everyone seems to move on from the latter very quickly, which was odd to watch. Felicity Kendal, on the other hand, delivered some powerfully subversive monologues as Filumena. Given that her character is berated for her past as a prostitute, seeing her take ownership of her choice to escape poverty through any means possible was refreshing. Kendal was the most confident in her character and made for the most stable, eye-catching force on the stage at any given moment.

“The play’s ridiculousness could have been played for laughs, but it didn’t commit enough to this to be successful”

Italy, and Naples specifically, conjure a very specific image for an audience member. Advertised as being set in the ‘balmy Neapolitan heat’, this production struggled to come across as such. The set was gorgeous, with its ceiling fresco and intricately designed windows, but this was the only part that seemed fully committed to transporting the audience to 40s Naples. The play is so typical of Italian theatre and culture – with its loud, character-driven monologues, familial focus and focus on the specific, difficult nuances of the Italian legal system for women - and yet Mathias chose to make the production a little too accessible for English audiences. The accents were very inconsistent - the actors would every so often slip into an Italian accent, and then return to their original, regional English one (to no surprise, one working-class character was coded as dim and therefore needed a Cockney accent…).

There were glimpses of a strong show in Filumena. It would be reductive (and also very concerning for my English degree) if I were to argue that no theatre before the 2000s could be performed due to its problematic content. My issue here is the lack of awareness that anything might need to be changed for a 2024 audience to be fully on board with this play - not to avoid offence, but to actually engage them with the content. 

Filumena is labelled as a comedy, but when a lot of the humour doesn’t land because the joke centres on women bending over, it's difficult to work out exactly what the audience is meant to find funny. The play’s ridiculousness could have been played for laughs, but it didn’t commit enough to this to be successful. The story had interesting and engaging potential for a revitalised production of a classic – but instead it felt more like a cold, grey weekend in Luton than a trip to sunny Naples.

‘Filumena’ is showing at the Cambridge Arts Theatre from Tuesday 5th to Saturday 9th November, at 7:30pm.