There is a certain frolicsomeness of intelligence and sensibility we have come to enjoy and expect in Irish born playwrights (Congreve, Sheridan, Shaw, and of course Wilde to name but four). What to the English pre-television mass audience had been a bitter pill of intellectualist theatre, in Irish hands had become sugared with a delight in language, prose at that, which still has the power to charm. So, one sets off to see a Wilde play with a certain expectation, modified in this case, it has to be said, by the prospect of a cast in the full spate of their maturity gambolling across the manicured lawns and drawing rooms of Edwardian England in pursuit of, and in the guise of, youth.
Fear not gentle reader, for should you venture out to the theatre you will not have your credulity affronted since our players have come up with a cunning plan. ‘Let’s pretend we’re a company of a certain vintage pretending to be a troupe of much younger actors’, goes the conceit. Well it works – after a fashion.
If you wanted to see Christine Kavanagh and Cherie Lunghi sparkle their way through their brittle friendship as the objects of desire of Messrs Worthing and Moncrieff you will not be disappointed. If you wanted to see Nigel Havers suave his way through a most attractive performance, you will not be disappointed. If you wanted to see Martin Jarvis bounce around in the guise of someone half his age, tongue firmly in cheek, you will not be disappointed. If you wanted to see one of our finest actresses with that rare ability to command the stage whenever she is on it, Sian Phillips will not disappoint. Rosalind Ayres as Miss Prism, Niall Buggy as Dr. Chasuble and Patrick Godfrey as Merriman all give performances worthy of the price of a ticket. In none of the performances will you be disappointed. Director Lucy Bailey finds laughs in the most unexpected places thanks to the conceit. She moves her actors around the stage with the mastery of a field marshal. Simon Brett’s additional scripting is deft and witty setting up the conceit perfectly. William Dudley’s set is luxurious in its Arts and Crafts detail. And yet the whole is no greater than the sum of its parts.
I felt like someone who had paid to see the Mona Lisa only to find that Duchamp had got there before me and scribbled a moustache on the painting. For all their coruscating wit, Wildean epigrams do need a context and I just wonder if prizing them out of their natural habitat has done them full justice and if the compromise in style demanded by the double layer of deceit is a novelty too far. Nonetheless, it is a clever idea which does allow some fine actors the opportunity to entertain with some class. ★★★☆☆ Graham Wyles
