THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. To 24 February
Derby
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
by Oscar Wilde
Derby Playhouse to 24 February 2007
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed & 10, 17 eb 2.30pm
Runs 2hr 15 min One interval
TICKETS: 01332 363275
www.derbyplayhouse.co.uk
Review: Alan Geary: 1 February
A production of admirable integrity serves an obvious masterpiece well. And it oozes decadence.
The strength of this production is that director Katie McAleese doesn’t try to get between Wilde and his audience: she lets his text, which is always beautifully delivered, speak for itself; and she doesn’t move the play from the fin de siècle period, where it properly belongs.
It’s a very orthodox, beautifully paced evening. McAleese, rightly, allows her leading men to camp it up, but without falling into the trap of being effeminate, which would make nonsense of the love interest.
From the start, there’s lots of lovely decadence about. When Algernon (a fine performance from Nick Caldecott) appears you can tell from his plush dressing-gown - it is after all tea-time - and the way he holds his cigarette that he’s probably a cad, certainly a bounder. At times he declaims his epigrams directly to the audience but it never seems inappropriate.
Cristina Greatrex's Lady Bracknell oozes decadence. With a deep, sexily smoky voice and abrasive manner, she successfully distances herself from Edith Evans without doing violence to the text. There’s nothing touchy or feely about her.
Even Philip Dunbar’s Lane comes across as sinister and seedily malevolent as well as funny - Dunbar also plays Merriman, by way of contrast, as the stock faithful-old-retainer.
Contrast is a feature of the evening: Jack (Robert Hastie), bald and buttoned-up, is nicely contrasted to Algernon, with his black mass of untidy hair; Gwendolen (Caitlin Mottram) is commanding and assertive - give her a few more years and she’ll be another Lady B; Cecily [Ellie Beaven] is almost a child.
Susie Baxter’s Miss Prism is insufficiently dotty at first but she’s nicely agitated whenever Chasuble appears, and splendid in the recognition scene. Timothy Kightley is perfect as the bumbling, High Church Chasuble.
The flouncy curtain set with the ornate chandelier in the middle, clearly cheaper than most recent Playhouse sets, works: it serves, perhaps, to remove the action from the real world, of which it is, after all, an abstraction. Likewise the gorgeous, slightly exaggerated, costumes.
The play itself is obviously a masterpiece. This production, one of admirable integrity, serves it well.
Miss Prism: Susie Baxter
Cecily: Ellie Beaven
Algernon: Nick Caldecott
Lane/Merriman: Philip Dunbar
Lady Bracknell: Christina Greatrex
Jack: Robert Hastie
Chasuble: Timothy Kightley
Gwendolen: Caitlin Mottram
Director: Katie McAleese
Designer: Dan Potra
Lighting: Emma Chapman
Costumes: Emma Waugh
2007-02-03 01:07:19