AN IDEAL HUSBAND. To 11 November.
Mold
AN IDEAL HUSBAND
by Oscar Wilde
Clwyd Theatr Cymru (Anthony Hopkins Theatre) To 11 November 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Sat 2.30pm
Audio-described 2 Nov, 11 Nov 2.30pm
Captioned 4 Nov 2.30pm
Post-show discussion 2, 9 Nov
Runs 2hr 55min One interval
TICKETS: 0845 330 3565
Review: Timothy Ramsden
What's a skeleton in the cupboard to a seat in the Cabinet?
There’s a chill prescience to Oscar Wilde’s 1895 society drama. References to English Puritanism and the press-pack’s exploitation of scandal, leading to victims’ withdrawal from society and self-exile, look ominously forward to his own fate. To which life didn’t bring the lucky contrivances of comedy.
Christopher Morahan’s production unifies Wilde’s witty comedy and moral narrative, giving an urgent pulse to the story of a promising politician’s impending disgrace over the discovery of an early misdeed. The laughable ladies occupying the sofas of Sir Robert and Lady Chiltern’s home never merely decorate the action, but exemplify the social world and its tightrope of correct behaviour, where hungry women allow themselves to be escorted to the food while proclaiming they have no desire to eat.
Similar social anxiety shows in Amanda Boxer’s Lady Markby, a quivering vocal trill adding a nervous edge to her assertions, alongside the blank face and anxious eyes of a finely-judged performance. In contrast there’s Selina Boyack’s Mabel Chiltern, excellently portraying confident, joyous youth not yet trapped in social expectations, with a wit to match Wilde’s most brilliant talker, Lord Goring.
Mabel contrasts, too, the other main women, Carolyn Backhouse’s unselfishly-played self-righteous Lady Chiltern, sure of herself because life’s never put uncertainty in her way, and Sophie Ward’s Mrs Chieveley, the woman with a past of her own, and a secret about Sir Robert’s early days. Ward plays her as a velvet-voiced pythoness curling smoothly round her victim.
Logically, she should give be the victor, but this being fiction the good end happily thanks to a plotting sleight-of-hand, or wrist as Mrs Chieveley becomes trapped with evidence bespeaking her own criminal past (surely, though, such a smooth operator would have secured her freedom before laying all her cards in the open).
After caution over Philip Bretherton’s recent Coward performance for Morahan at Mold, it’s pleasant to report his perfect combination of social suavity with serious point – even over such not-so-little things in life as an apt buttonhole. It’s a mix caught too in designer Mark Bailey’s various glitteringly empty and soberly serious settings, spot-on for this perceptive production.
Mrs Marchmont: Catherine Harvey
Lady Basildon: Julia Tarnoky
Vicomte de Nanjac/Mason: Martin Fisher
Lady Chiltern: Carolyn Backhouse
Earl of Caversham: Jerome Willis
Mabel Chiltern: Selina Boyack
Lady Markby: Amanda Boxer
Mrs Cheveley: Sophie Ward
Sir Robert Chiltern: Simon Dutton
Lord Goring: Philip Breteherton
Mr Montford/Phipps: David Semark
Director: Christotpher Morahan
Designer: Mark Bailey
Lighting: Ben Ormerod
Sound: Dan Armishaw
Composer: Ilona Sekacz
2006-11-06 02:28:30