[NEohioPAL] Review: An Ideal Husband at The Shaw Festival

[Lawrence Seman]

An Ideal Husband
at The Shaw Festival
Larry Seman
 
After An Ideal Husband opened in 1895 Oscar Wilde noted that his new play was based entirely on the psychological "difference in the way in which a man loves a woman from that in which a woman loves a man." Wilde wrote the play in little over two months for the actor-manager John Hare but amazingly he turned it down. However eventually it was picked up and opened at the Haymarket in January and became an immediate success running for 111 performances, closing by coincidence the day after Wilde's arrest.

After much suffering in Reading prison, his health broken by the hard labor of the tread wheel, Wilde managed some later thoughts on the work noting that: "An Ideal Husband was the play which most closely resembled the terrible drama of my life - the husband's fear is that of scandal. But in the play I made it clear that I do not give into threats. I wrote the passages of denunciation and pride with all the passion of a man convinced of the truth of his own narrative. I believed that I was a great enough dramatist to turn life itself into a drama." And so he did.
 
George Bernard Shaw reviewed the play and he declared that: "In a certain sense, Mr. Wilde is to me our thorough playwright. He plays with everything: with wit, with philosophy, with drama, with actors and audience, with the whole theatre. . . ." And so he did.
 
On display is the cold blooded attempt of one Mrs. Cheveley to blackmail the otherwise upright politician Sir Robert with a letter referring to a past indiscretion. Wilde like the master artist he was paints Victorian society in its subtle colors which hide the more volatile aspects underlying the mask of the "stiff upper lip." That type of insight speaks of a writer who has an honest knowledge of his own foibles and who has experienced the bitter confusion of a world that desperately clings to the rightness of their own. A very high standard to achieve. And so he did.
 
The Shaw's production trys to present this classic work in a form to accommodate our "contemporary sensibilities" as the Director Jackie Maxwell notes, to match "what feels in many ways, a very modern play." And so she didn't.
 
It's not possible to impose a viewpoint on any work of art unless there is an underlying logic to the effort. Oh yes there is plenty of Victorian manners and societal mores to knock about in this production but that's down to Wilde not the vision of the director or designer for that matter. Beginning with the collaboration on the ponderous set of the Chiltern mansion one spends far too much attention on wondering just what it was they were thinking about when the first model was introduced. Is it perhaps a cross section of an ocean liner, or perhaps (as another review noted) the second story of a Las Vegas casino? The "clomp, clomping" of the actors' entrances and exits further exacerbates the difficulty in enjoying this work and that is down to basic stagecraft. Accents, foreign and domestic are uneven at times flouting the general rule that a "hint" will do very nicely thank you.
 
Salvaging this production is some fine acting by the quasi-rake Steven Sutcliffe as Lord Goring who valiantly trys to undo the machinations of Mrs. Chevely given a chilling portrayal by Moya O'Connell. Also worth noting is Marla McLean who sparkles as Miss Mabel Chiltern finally bringing the immature Lord Goring to realize what is really important in his life. 
 
Though Wilde's work may not be everyone's taste he remains an important force in reflecting the conflicts between those that assert an individual viewpoint and the rush to judgment mentality that is as much alive today as it was in Victorian times. As Wilde posited: men and women see each other a bit differently than they see each other, but there are to be sure ideals such as love and loyalty that survive in spite of it all.
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Larry


      
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: <http://lists.neohiopal.org/pipermail/neohiopal-neohiopal.org/attachments/20100609/83f2d0db/attachment-0003.htm>