The Clandestine Marriage, at the Queens Theatre, has a great deal to recommend it. It is brisk, amusing and agreeable. As the arthritic old gallant Lord Ogleby, Nigel Hawthorne (who also directs) confirms - if confirmation is needed - that he is a comic actor of the first rank, and there are fine ripe performances from some of his colleagues.
    If the evening none the less fails to scale the heights, the play itself, a tale of aristocrats entangled with the daughters of the rich City vulgarian, must bear much of the responsibility. Not that it is an incompetent piece of work - far from it. The authors, David Garrick and George Colman knew their business. But for the most part the characters and the situations remain stock 18th-century fare: they lack the touch of genius that a Goldsmith or a Sheridan would have brought to them.
    Hawthorne's direction also has its weaknesses. He is right not to try to turn the play, as so man contemporary directors would have done, into a harsh satire or an angry history lesson, but it has to be admitted that his old-fashioned geniality goes with a certain lack of comic focus. There are some regrettable patches of whimsy, and too much scurrying around and pointing up the joke in the minor roles.
    When he is on stage himself, however, you forget all your objections. Ogleby preparing to face the day with his sip of "surfeit water" and his rouge and the oil for his gout is a grotesque delight. Ogleby tottering forward, animated by the ghost of remembered lust, is alarmingly funny. He has a frog-like charm, too, and he finally persuades you that, for all his vanity, he really does have enough generosity to ensure a happy ending.
    As the City man, Christopher Benjamin alternates to good effect between stolidity and cunning; as his domineering sister, Susan Engel is outstanding. Incidental pleasures include a group of barristers airily discussing their current cases with one another: "We shall certainly be hanged - but that don't signify."