AN IDEAL HUSBAND. To 26 January.
Manchester.
AN IDEAL HUSBAND
by Oscar Wilde
Royal Exchange Theatre To 26 January 2008.
Mon-Fri 7.30pm Sat 8pm Mat Wed 2.30pm & Sat 4pm.
Audio-described 12 Jan 4pm.
BSL Signed 19 Jan 4pm.
Post-show discussion 24 Jan.
Runs 3hr One interval.
TICKETS: 0161 833 9833.
www.royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 19 December.
Strong production shows all that glitters is not gold.
This production leaves no doubt we’re in the heart of late Victorian high society, with its eight-chandeliered drawing-room of rising government minister Robert Chiltern. Ever-praised as the coming man, he’s an insider. But he’s threatened by an outsider.
Mrs Cheveley is a woman of mystery, who knows she must cling to every straw of respectability to edge back into society. She has money, thanks to her link with a shady foreign Baron, but she requires Chiltern’s help – and she knows the secret in his past.
Few play titles are more keenly ironic. Robert is an ideal husband, but not a morally impeccable politician. Doubtless Wilde, the Irish outsider whose wit gave him an entrée to a society he knew would shun him were his secret discovered, understood the play’s dilemmas.
But he also writes an indictment of society as savage as that of Bernard Shaw’s near-contemporary Widowers’ Houses. And Simon Robson’s Chiltern makes this clear. He’s someone a wife, or a country, would trust, yet whose features take on a hardness and whose voice under pressure can acquire the threatening low notes of a bully. Under the smoothness he’s a real brown-envelope job of a politician.
Yet everyone defends him, including the most sympathetic character, Lord Goring: the insider secure of his place and so able to behave as a maverick. Beneath his surface is a man who behaves properly, if with the individual taste that led him to the bracelet which traps Mrs Cheveley. The Establishment always gets its man – or woman. Milo Twomey shows a genuine fervour for friendship, an honesty that finally meets Chiltern’s rebuff. It only takes moments for the politician to be back politicking; and it doesn’t take long to overcome his scruples about resignation.
Under the glittering surfaces it’s a bitter play as Murray shows, without losing the surface sheen. The society talk becomes purposeful for the plot and Rae Hendrie’s Lady Chiltern pales beside Joanna Riding’s coolly determined Cheveley. Ann Firbank and Claudia Renton stand out at opposite ends of the age range, creating ‘Before’ and ‘After’ pictures of life in high society.
Lord Goring: Milo Twomey.
Lady Gertrude Chiltern: Rae Hendrie.
Sir Robert Chiltern: Simon Robson.
Miss Mabel Chiltern: Claudia Renton
Lady Markby: Ann Firbank.
The Earl of Caversham: Jeffry Wickham.
Vicomte de Nanjac: Jean-Marc Perret.
Mason: Edmund Kente.
Phipps/MrMontford: Stephen Hudson.
The Countess of Basildon: Zannah Hodson.
Mrs Marchmont: Kate Mieko-Ward.
Mrs Cheveley: Joanna Riding.
Director: Braham Murray.
Designer: Simon Higlett.
Lighting: Jason Taylor.
Sound: Pete Rice.
2008-01-04 14:29:05