WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS. To 25 February.
Manchester
WHAT EVERY WOMAN KNOWS
by J M Barrie
Royal Exchange Theatre To 25 February 2006
Mon-Sat 7.30pm Mat Wed 2.30pm & Sat 4pm
BSL Signed 11 Feb 4pm
Runs 2hr 25min One interval
TICKETS: 0161 833 9833
boxoffice@royalexchange.co.uk
www.royalexchange.co.uk
Review: Timothy Ramsden 4 February
Humour tends to stereotype character early on, but this production flowers along with the author’s theme.
What every woman knows is that a good portion of the ideas and impressiveness with which their male partners strut around the public stage comes from the good sense injected by womenfolk in apparently unrelated domestic surrounds. And Maggie Wiley knows charm is a quality she doesn’t possess, while for any woman who does possess it, no other quality is needed.
She says this early on, and Barrie later shows it’s her sole mistake. Maggie has what matters when charm wears thin, as it does when Maggie cunningly arranges for her infatuated husband John Shand to spend a month in the country with bored society charmer Sybil Tenterden (played by Ruta Gedmintas as a terminally languid Princess Diana).
Shand might have been a working-class hero, an ambitious student forced to work as a railway-porter and steal into the Wiley house at night to use their books, until the Wiley menfolk catch him and offer money to study if he’ll wed unmarriageable Maggie. But, though he reaches parliament as a progressive-minded MP supporting the women’s movement, Shand’s insensitivity to Maggie makes Othello seem a contender for Husband of the Year. Barrie handles this with gentle, sentimental irony, being less fervent than his Lancashire contemporary Harold Brighouse in seeing women not as spare rib, but backbone for their men.
Braham Murray’s production emphasises the play’s comedy, strangely giving earlier scenes a slightly heavy-handed feel. Mark Arends plays up Shand’s self-confessed humourlessness but finds no room in his mixed mental denseness and self-assurance to show what Maggie finds worthwhile in him. Yet there’s good work from Michael Elwyn’s senior political fixer, concerned over Shand’s variable quality, and Gabrielle Drake as the French woman of the social world who understands who’s responsible for the witty ‘Shandisms’ that sometimes enliven Maggie’s husband’s speeches. Jenny Ogilvie has a neatly insinuating manner with her husband that fits her clear-minded determination, and genuine anxiety to win him whole-heartedly for herself.
“Sussed,” as one man said on the way out. Indeed, and if this Royal Exchange revival isn’t quite definitive it still lets Barrie’s points speak loud and clear.
David Wylie: James Watson
Alick Wylie: Roy Sampson
James Wylie: Michael Moorland
Maggie Wylie: Jenny Ogilvie
John Shand: Mark Arends
Comtesse de la Briere: Gabrielle Drake
Lady Sybil Tenterden: Ruta Gedmintas
Charles Venables: Michael Elwyn
Thomas: Ali Natkiel
Maid: Nuala Cavanagh
Director: Braham Murray
Designers: Johanna Bryant, Louise Ann Wilson
Lighting: Jason Taylor
Sound: Peter Rice
2006-02-07 11:05:05