Classic Spring Theatre Company (live broadcast), 05/06/2018
Oscar Wilde : An Ideal Husband
Classic Spring Theatre Company
Directed by Jonathan Church
The real curse of junk (e-)mail is that you get inundated with so much rubbish, it's very easy to overlook items of interest. I only discovered a few weeks ago that there was a London theatre company doing a season of the main Oscar Wilde plays, and broadcasting them live all over the country. Net result, I missed the first two, which I would certainly have gone to see, but at least I caught An Ideal Husband.
Director Jonathan Church has not played any fancy tricks with the setting, and all the better for it, because the text resonates frequently and startlingly with current affairs, without any assistance required from the director. "I am afraid I can't take him with me to Downing Street," says Lord Caversham of his son, Lord Goring, in the last act. "It is not the Prime Minister's day for seeing the unemployed." Oh, yes, that got quite a laugh, as you may imagine.
Simon Higlett's late-Victorian drawing-rooms are, in one sense, a little clichéd (was that an aspidistra I saw in one corner?), but they also stand for the conformity of most of the characters, and through their cosy, gold-tinted interiors, Frances Barber's Mrs. Cheveley, in her elaborate, jewel-toned gowns stalked like a tigress.
Barber's feline smile and husky voice were admirably suited to this character's exoticism; she's meant to make the other female leads look wan by comparison, and Barber certainly succeeded in that. The best was the Act 3 confrontation with Lord Goring, Barber first trying to seduce, then facing off against Freddie Fox's excellent Goring. Goring has most of the best lines, and his dandified character - who spends the first five minutes of that act admiring himself in the (invisible) mirror - is the comic foil to Chiltern's more serious, yet just as self-absorbed, nature. Yet he is also, for all his frivolity, the voice of common sense in the play, it's he who tries to provide good advice and assistance, even as he jokes that it never does any good. It's a fine balancing act, between sentiment and frippery, always turning aside the moments of seriousness with a quick quip, and Fox handled it with delightful lightness. Goring's snippy interactions with his elderly father, equal parts affection and exasperation, were undoubtedly spiced by the fact that Freddie Fox's real-life father, Edward Fox, was playing Caversham, testily upper-crust to the core.
Sally Bretton almost managed to make Lady Chiltern likeable, which takes some doing, because the character's one of Wilde's more irritating creations. Tonight, however, the irritation was felt for Faith Omole's Mabel. This character is very similar to Cecily, in The Importance of Being Earnest (which was premiered just a few weeks after An Ideal Husband), a bright, pert girl in her late teens, accustomed to speaking her mind and getting away with it, but with a touch of vulnerability behind her sass, that can make her just a little clingy. What we got from Omole was a sharp, agressive young woman, too mature for Mabel, and not nearly as endearing as she is meant to be.
Nathaniel Parker was an earnest Chiltern, very mildly ridiculous, as he should be, but more than able to draw everything into sharp focus when required, for the speech about power in Act 2, and later in the same act, when he blows up at his wife, both extremely effective. Susan Hampshire produced a wonderful, babbling Lady Markby, rendering her gossipy speeches with easy charm, and never letting them sag into useless verbiage.
This was a very fine production, well staged, and very well delivered, an apt reminder that Wilde has not aged, his witty aphorisms as well as his satirical observations are as pertinent and acute now as they were back in 1895. The situations have not changed all that much, and people remain as they have always been, in all their strengths and weaknesses. I certainly hope to see the last (and best known) of this Wilde quartet in the autumn.
[Next : 8th June]
Classic Spring Theatre Company
Directed by Jonathan Church
The real curse of junk (e-)mail is that you get inundated with so much rubbish, it's very easy to overlook items of interest. I only discovered a few weeks ago that there was a London theatre company doing a season of the main Oscar Wilde plays, and broadcasting them live all over the country. Net result, I missed the first two, which I would certainly have gone to see, but at least I caught An Ideal Husband.
Director Jonathan Church has not played any fancy tricks with the setting, and all the better for it, because the text resonates frequently and startlingly with current affairs, without any assistance required from the director. "I am afraid I can't take him with me to Downing Street," says Lord Caversham of his son, Lord Goring, in the last act. "It is not the Prime Minister's day for seeing the unemployed." Oh, yes, that got quite a laugh, as you may imagine.
Simon Higlett's late-Victorian drawing-rooms are, in one sense, a little clichéd (was that an aspidistra I saw in one corner?), but they also stand for the conformity of most of the characters, and through their cosy, gold-tinted interiors, Frances Barber's Mrs. Cheveley, in her elaborate, jewel-toned gowns stalked like a tigress.
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| Freddie Fox (Lord Goring) and Frances Barber (Mrs. Cheveley) in An Ideal Husband (© Vaudeville Theatre / Classic Spring Theatre Co. 2018) |
Barber's feline smile and husky voice were admirably suited to this character's exoticism; she's meant to make the other female leads look wan by comparison, and Barber certainly succeeded in that. The best was the Act 3 confrontation with Lord Goring, Barber first trying to seduce, then facing off against Freddie Fox's excellent Goring. Goring has most of the best lines, and his dandified character - who spends the first five minutes of that act admiring himself in the (invisible) mirror - is the comic foil to Chiltern's more serious, yet just as self-absorbed, nature. Yet he is also, for all his frivolity, the voice of common sense in the play, it's he who tries to provide good advice and assistance, even as he jokes that it never does any good. It's a fine balancing act, between sentiment and frippery, always turning aside the moments of seriousness with a quick quip, and Fox handled it with delightful lightness. Goring's snippy interactions with his elderly father, equal parts affection and exasperation, were undoubtedly spiced by the fact that Freddie Fox's real-life father, Edward Fox, was playing Caversham, testily upper-crust to the core.
Sally Bretton almost managed to make Lady Chiltern likeable, which takes some doing, because the character's one of Wilde's more irritating creations. Tonight, however, the irritation was felt for Faith Omole's Mabel. This character is very similar to Cecily, in The Importance of Being Earnest (which was premiered just a few weeks after An Ideal Husband), a bright, pert girl in her late teens, accustomed to speaking her mind and getting away with it, but with a touch of vulnerability behind her sass, that can make her just a little clingy. What we got from Omole was a sharp, agressive young woman, too mature for Mabel, and not nearly as endearing as she is meant to be.
Nathaniel Parker was an earnest Chiltern, very mildly ridiculous, as he should be, but more than able to draw everything into sharp focus when required, for the speech about power in Act 2, and later in the same act, when he blows up at his wife, both extremely effective. Susan Hampshire produced a wonderful, babbling Lady Markby, rendering her gossipy speeches with easy charm, and never letting them sag into useless verbiage.
This was a very fine production, well staged, and very well delivered, an apt reminder that Wilde has not aged, his witty aphorisms as well as his satirical observations are as pertinent and acute now as they were back in 1895. The situations have not changed all that much, and people remain as they have always been, in all their strengths and weaknesses. I certainly hope to see the last (and best known) of this Wilde quartet in the autumn.
[Next : 8th June]