The Importance of Being Earnest

by Oscar Wilde

seen by live streaming from the Vaudeville Theatre on 9 October 2018

Dominic Dromgoole has created a theatre company to perform all of Oscar Wilde's social comedies and some related works; this is the fourth major production. Michael Fentiman directs Jacob Fortune-Lloyd as Jack, Fehinti Balogun as Algernon, Sophie Thompson as Lady Bracknell, Pippa Nixon as Gwendolen, Fiona Button as Cecily, Stella Gonet as Miss Prism and Jeremy Swift as Canon Chasuble in this, perhaps the most brilliant play of its kind.

Almost nothing can detract from the perfect poise of Wilde's writing; the aphorisms and witty repartee, the clever inversions that reveal social snobberies and prejudices with rapier-thrust accuracy, flow from the lips of almost all the characters as the absurdities of the situation mount up and then are almost as absurdly resolved. It would seem that the only things counting against it are its reputation and the shadow of some overpowering performances from the past (for example, Edith Evans as Lady Bracknell).

In many ways this production hits the right note, with the cast on the whole managing the delivery of the lines more successfully than in the other two productions I have seen. Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, Pippa Nixon and in particular Sophie Thompson are the best at this, though Fiona Button is too modern in her deportment for a teenaged girl of that time, and unfortunately it is clear that Wilde's vocal style works best with a late nineteenth-century physical restraint.  

However, I have serious reservations about some of the directorial and design decisions. The social comedy relies on the social context which it is satirising, and it is dangerous to ignore this; false notes are an unwelcome distraction. The first false note is the presence of a peculiarly explicit painting of two naked men grappling one another, which is given prominence in Algernon's living room. It is simply inconceivable that any gentleman would have had such a thing on public display in a room which ladies would be likely to visit (especially, perhaps, relations).

More seriously, the relationship between Algernon and Lane (his butler) is conceived as far more intimate than it should be. Lane remains on stage for a considerable stretch when the stage directions explicitly indicate that he is not there, and Algernon lights him a cigarette, offers him sherry and indulges in the occasional kiss. It is just plain wrong, a complete distraction from the real business of the play, and a needless sacrifice of any genuine social comment that might be made of the badinage between them, which is if anything a precursor of the Jeeves and Wooster situation, not the cover for a surreptitious sexual fling. 

A similar social barrier is needlessly crossed in a small dumbshow scene in which Cecily shares an illicit cigarette with Moulton the gardener behind Miss Prism's back. Cecily may have a wild imagination, but the sheer impropriety of this idea threatens to ruin the whole ambience in which she moves. Equally the presentation of Merriman as an outdoors servant (open shirt and no jacket) overburdened with the supposed Ernest's luggage, when he is obviously a superior house servant who would have ordered the footmen to deal with the luggage, is a serious misreading of how a wealthy country household would have been run. 

Finally, the marvellous scene in which Cecily and Gwendolen descend from superficial effusiveness to icy politeness to silent hostility is just about ruined by the crassness of the sugar and cake business at the end. (Indeed the consumption of food in general too often degenerated into incipient custard pie moments when again absolute adherence to social norms generates the comedy.) No well brought up young lady of that period would grab a tea cake and pull it apart with her hands and then allow a servant to touch it while handing it over even to a rival. The whole point of the scene is that the ritual of afternoon tea is pursued with absolute correctness but without paying attention to what the guest has asked for.

It's curious that I accept many directorial interventions in modern Shakespeare productions, but I think that attempts to introduce subplots into Oscar Wilde's plays - which all three productions that I have seen in this season have done - are a distracting failure. There is simply no room for them; the plays are not about secret romances belowstairs, and even less about shenanigans between upstairs and downstairs, and to interpolate such things as a modish modern joke or knowing social comment is simply gratuitous. The catastrophe of what Wilde himself suffered in a homophobic society is very well known, but it does neither him nor his social comedies any favours to pretend that they are the place to show what could not in reality be shown or referred to.

It's a pity, really, that these gem-likef plays should not have been trusted to entertain today's audiences on their own merits.

An Ideal Husband

by Oscar Wilde

seen by live streaming from the Vaudeville THeatre on 5 June 2018

Dominic Dromgoole has created a theatre company to perform all of Oscar Wilde's social comedies and some associated works; this is the third major production. Jonathan Church directs Sally Britton as Lady Chiltern, Nathaniel Parker as Sir Robert Chiltern, Faith Omole as Miss Mabel Chiltern, Frances Barber as Mrs Cheveley, Susan Hampshire as Lady Markby, Edward Fox as the Earl of Caversham and Freddie Fox as his son Viscount Goring.

This play has more substance than Lady Windermere's Fan (reviewed in March this year); though perhaps this is a modern conclusion, since the potential scandal driving the plot is one of political corruption rather than the revelation of illegitimate birth. Mrs Cheveley wishes to blackmail Lord Chiltern (a member of the government) into supporting a shady foreign deal because she has irrefutable evidence of the fact that he based his fortune on selling a Cabinet secret many years before. Although she is eventually foiled, and we are on the whole glad that this is the case (since she is herself hardly a moral paragon), the situation nevertheless raises many pertinent questions about loyalty, honesty, public power and private integrity, and there is no doubt that she scores many points.

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.

Salomé

by Yaël Farber

seen at the National Theatre (Olivier) on 5 May 2017

This play, originally inspired by Oscar Wilde's play of the same name, but much amended by the director Yaël Farber and her dramaturg Drew Lichtenberg, recasts the story of Salomé to take into account the fact that women's actions as recorded by male and prejudicial sources in the ancient world may have been very different from what is conventionally assumed.

Here, Pontius Pilate (Lloyd Hutchinson, representing Rome) and Caiaphas (Philip Arditti, representing the priestly establishment) and Herod (Paul Chahidi, a mere client king of the Romans) are all keen that Iokanaan (John the Baptist) should be kept alive, even though he has been arrested, in order to avoid any chance of a popular uprising should he be killed in custody. But the fatal promise by Herod in a moment of rashness brought on by his infatuation with his young niece is still made, the price - Iokanaan's head on a platter - is still exacted, and the rebellion occurs and is crushed (so Pilate thinks).

There are echoes of the Wilde play throughout, not least in the concentration on the fateful night of the execution, and the account of the oath and its consequences. However, the political situation is given far more explanation through the presence of Pilate, and Salomé's own motivation, and the interpretation of her significance, is completely altered, not least by the fact that her older spirit narrates the story (a white-haired Olwen Fouéré, billed as 'Nameless' in the cast list). I say spirit, because though in this version Herod does not order her death as at the end of the Wilde play, Pilate most certainly does in exasperation at her refusal to explain herself to him.

Instead of a decadent young woman obsessed with kissing the mouth of Iokanaan, Salomé is presented more as the victim of male desire and politics, and indeed in her younger version (Isabella Nefar) she does not speak at all until after her encounter with Iokanaan (Ramzi Choukair) in the cistern prison where he is being kept alive by force-feeding. The notorious dance of the seven veils is transformed from a titillating strip-tease before Herod and his dinner guests into an ecstatic preparation for a cleansing ritual after which Iokanaan baptises her in the dregs of the cistern water. Consequently, she wills the apocalyptic rebellion in order to attempt to free the people from foreign domination, and it seems that Iokanaan is more than half in love with the idea of martyrdom as well.

The production is powerful, but strange and demanding. The Olivier stage is almost bare apart from a few trestle tables and chairs; one long trestle support becomes a very effective ladder down which Salomé 'climbs' to reach Iokanaan (the production is designed by Susan Hilferty). Sand cascades from above at certain moments, reminding us of the desert setting of some scenes, and contrasting with the shallow troughs of water representing the Jordan and later the cistern. The deliberately formal and distancing language of the Wilde play (where it is used) is matched by an extremely ritualised presentation, including wordless singing by two women, and careful positioning of all the cast often on a slowly revolving stage. To add to the sense of strangeness and distance, Iokanaan does not once speak in English, but rather in Arabic (I assume) directly quoting many Old Testament passages from the Prophets and from the Song of Songs. Some of his words are translated on a screen projection, and this is generally enough to convey the import of the incantatory style of his delivery (though maybe many in a modern audience will really have no idea of the references). There is also a minor figure identified as 'Yeshua the madman' looking like a wild beggar from the desert and occasionally saying things recognisable as Gospel phrases, but his presence seems to indicate only that Iokanaan is the more significant figure in everyone's eyes. 

It's engrossing and thought provoking; the auditorium was almost full for a preview performance, and I noticed only two people leave before the end. The play runs for nearly two hours without a break and the audience was, so far as I could judge, genuinely attentive. I was certainly fascinated. At times the narrative of the 'nameless' older woman veered between being too didactic and too knowingly gnomic, with grandiose statements about 'the first and the last' and so forth. This could fall into pretentiousness, but the strength and conviction of the cast prevented this from happening.