THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. To 16 November.
Glasgow
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
by Oscar Wilde
Citizens' Theatre To 16 November 2002
Tue-Sat 7.30pm Mat 9 November 3pm
Runs 2hr 10min One interval
TICKETS 0141 429 0022
www.citz.org.uk
Review Timothy Ramsden 25 October
An often efficient, but surprisingly bland production, with curious textual arrangements.Anyone near Glasgow who's been waiting for a performance of Earnest will find some satisfaction in this Citizens' production, though they'll have to put up with variable acting. But on the larger scale, and particularly in the light of Bill Alexander's recent innovative Northampton production, this is disappointing.
In some ways it's almost a pastiche Citizens' show. There's the spare elegance of Kenny Miller's design, gleaming cream and glass variously in carpet, elegant chairs and freestanding mirrored-wall sections set-off by a black-curtain surround for Algie's London house; for the rural scenes, a retreat by the blacks, plus a swivel of the wall sections to create an elegant, ordered flower-garden.
And Giles Havergal makes textual changes. The first Citizens' show I ever saw was a Restoration drama where he'd boldly relocated the action to a theatre, cut the entire secondary plot and substituted a cut-down version of another play, to fine effect. Here, he omits the final part of act two - a shame in terms of the omitted dialogue though undoubtedly good for plot momentum. It also allows an elision between the last acts, cutting out the slow-down of a set-change.
Then he adds in lines from Wilde's original four-act version, holding up the denouement. Why? And why does Lady Bracknell exit, only to reappear clumsily to finish off a lame running gag about missing trains - not even using the entrance established for the scene's location?
Usually, Havergal's innovations throw new light on a play. Here they seem at best convenience (the act 2/3 elision), at worst intrusive (the 'four act' material at the end).
Of course, he gets things right. That line has been scrubbed free of Edith Evans incrustations often enough, but Ellen Sheean plays the handbag right down, giving the laugh right enough to John Worthing's subsequent embarrassed attempt at an explanation and building to the comic climax where Wilde surely intended it to be, on 'The line is immaterial'.
Sheean is particularly good as Lady Bracknell in the first act; she is absent for the central of Wilde's acts and the performance doesn't disguise that in her last act reappearance she's something of a lesser being. The reworked script doesn't help, but Sheean herself seems a tad less in command here.
It's amusing too, to see how Gwendolen does, courtesy of hat and costume, seem to become more like her mother, aptly enough as she takes on something of an apprentice dowager role when she arrives in the country for her towering combat with 'little Cecily' (here, as in Northampton, pronounced 'Sicily').
Lorna McDevitt, hair smoothed back under her hat, is all suavity, well contrasted by the loose, wild curls of Vivien Reid's Cecily. Reid contrasts her opponent's assured urbanity with a naivety of facial and vocal expression: it makes her deliberate mis-serving of sugared tea and cake aptly seem a child's trick. But this is clearly mixed with an independent will: at no point does she seem the least perplexed or irresolute.
Algie and Jack have a game of air-punch mock-fighting that neatly signs the boyish nature of their long-term friendship; it develops into a real fight in act two (maybe the reason Havergal felt able to omit the Algie/Jack 'muffin-fight'). But neither handles the dialogue with much style or flexibility; in one case, casting has to be called into question.
There are a few neat hints of desire chasing chastity between the decent Prism and underwhelming Chasuble. The servant class is adequate.
Mr Moncrieff: Jay Manley
Lane: Malcolm Shields
Mr Worthing: Stuart Bowman
Lady Bracknell: Ellen Sheean
Hon. Gwendolen Fairfax: Lorna McDevitt
Miss Prism: Jan Carey
Cecily Cardew: Vivien Reid
Rev. Canon Chasuble: Leonard Kavanagh
Merriman: Tim Robinson
Director: Giles Havergal
Designer: Kenny Miller
Lighting: Zerlina Hughes
2002-10-27 18:05:49