THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. To 17 September.
York
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
by Oscar Wilde
Theatre Royal To 17 September 2005
Tue-Sat 7.30pm
Runs 2hr 35min One interval
TICKETS: 01904 623568
www.yorktheatreroyal.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 31 August
Excessive external detail is no substitute for understanding a play's inner motor.David Leonard's acting CV includes regular stints as York's panto villain-in-chief, Now he's turned to directing, with a main-stage revival of perhaps the most perfectly-formed of comedies. Any tinkering with structure or detail is perilous.
Leonard restores material cut before the first-night, emphasising a mercenary note, with Algy's arrest for 'Ernest's' debts bringing the London world into Jack Worthing's garden idyll.
Emma Donovan's designs point the contrast between urban and rural, the charcoal-brushed cityscape backing the first, London act contrasting bright colours in the country.
In other respects they're overblown. Black drapes and footlights (little used) needlessly emphasise theatricality, while a large oval portrait of Queen Victoria vanishes as the bare stage is coloured in by stage-hands bringing on the set.
Algy's room becomes an oasis amid a grey society (garishly so when the women arrive). But when the Vic pic returns at the ends, to be replaced with one of Wilde, the process becomes so cumbersome that audience applause has dried up before the set-changes have finished, let alone the actors returned.
Again, Lady Bracknell and Gwendolen enter Algy's flat through big central doors, parasols aloft, to (unnecessary) march music. Lady B leaves the same way. Yet Gwendolen exits, to the same carriage, by a different exit. Is it merely that it would be too noticeable to open the large rear door for each exit - again, design ruling a roost where it's meant to serve?
Visual and vocal tics infest the acting. At best they have a point; Jack is fooled into over-familiar jocularity by Lady Bracknell's sympathetic manner in act one. By the last act he's learned the lesson, holding himself back and using his newly advantageous position. Elsewhere, bolt-on ideas overlay and disrupt Wilde's wit and flow.
Algy cowers in fear from the solicitor Gribsby (a politely insistent Michael Roberts) behind Jack's chair. Algy is scared when money really matters, and it does mean he's a supplicant to Jack. But this new light on Algy doesn't relate to his character subsequently.
If only more time had been given to providing the adequate Gwendolen and Cecily with more variety of pace and tone in their garden scene. Or giving more focus to the village-idiot of a giggling, arm-waving Chasuble or inexplicably surly Merriman.
The two best performances come from opposite ends of the social spectrum. Kate Brown is an unusually young, attractive and soft-voiced Lady Bracknell, someone still in the social swim. Her concern for respectability goes with her fear of revolution (a theme reinforced by the restored cuts). No wonder she won't marry her family into a railway station or form an alliance with a parcel - parcels can contain revolutionaries' bombs. It's a clean, well-phrased performance uncluttered by mannerisms.
And Roberts' Lane, emerging from the underworld on a trap-door, is immaculate yet full of sideways looks and insolent tones calculated for only Algy to catch. He implies a whole sub-world when the doors are shut on Lady Bracknell and her respectability. These 2 performances suggest a far finer production that might have been.
Lane/Moulton/Gribsby: Michael Roberts
Algernon Moncrieff: Edward Bennett
John Worthing: Christopher Naylor
Lady Bracknell: Kate Brown
Gwendolen Fairfax: Lucy Chalkley
Miss Prism: Christine Cox
Cecily Cardew: Isabella Calthorpe
Rev Chasuble: Iain Rogerson
Merriman: Stephen McKenna
Director: David Leonard
Designer: Emma Donovan
Lighting: Richard G Jones
2005-09-01 16:01:36