The Watsons

by Laura Wade

seen at the Menier Chocolate Factory on 10 November 2019

Samuel West directs this adaptation of Jane Austen's unfinished novel, with Grace Molony as Emma Watson and Loiuse Ford as Laura and a large supporting cast in a production designed by Ben Stones. The play was originally performed in Chichester, and is due for a transfer to the West End (as are so many of the Menier's successful productions).

Jane Austen began this novel in 1804, but chose not to complete it. There are some scrappy hints of her intentions, but no real explanation of why it was abandoned - a field day for an enthusiastic adapter.The play sets the scene, a predictable and enjoyable story of a young girl in reduced circumstances making her way in a social setting rich with possibilities for Austen's characteristically waspish observations about custom, propriety and marriage prospects. Emma has been brought up by a wealthy relative, and then discarded to be returned to her father's house just as the father is declining towards death; she has to cope with an older sister who has devoted herself to their father, a more flighty sister, and a married brother with a snobbish wife. She attracts the interest of the inarticulate Lord Osborne, and also has an easy familiarity with the clergyman attached to the Osborn estate.

Lady Windermere's Fan

by Oscar Wilde

seen by live streaming from the Vaudeville Theatre on 20 March 2018

Dominic Dromgoole has created a theatre company to perform all of Oscar Wilde's social comedies and some associated works; this is the second major production (after A Woman of No Importance). Kathy Burke directs Grace Molony as Lady Windermere, Joshua James as Lord Windermere, Samantha Spiro as Mrs Erlynne and Jennifer Saunders as the Duchess of Berwick.

Wilde uses the conventions of a melodrama to skewer social pretensions and at the same time to criticise unthinking adherence to moral absolutes. Mrs Erlynne is the catalyst for a crisis in the Windermere marriage. But most of the crisis is played out according to the mores of the time - the wife virtuous and condemnatory of social and ethical impropriety, the husband floundering in his attempts to do what's best in a situation where his natural presumption of masculine authority collides with his entrapment in blackmail. Curiously, although the audience is soon aware of the secret causing all the mayhem, Lady Windermere remains oblivious and some other major deceptions are also not unmasked.