The IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST at the Vaudeville Theatre: Classic Spring has sprung...

The year-long celebration of Oscar Wilde at the Vaudeville Theatre has been an enjoyable season courtesy of Dominic Dromgoole's Classic Theatre Company, a debut season in their mission to present classic writer's plays on the proscenium arch stages that they were written for.

A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN and AN IDEAL HUSBAND have led inexorably to the climax of the season, his magnificent comedy THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. Sadly the production sits very shakily on the top of the others' achievements.  The play has been dazzling audiences since 1895 and will continue to do so... but through no thanks to director Michael Fentiman who imposes himself between the glorious words and the audience from the start.

EARNEST is the blistering, blissful apex of Wilde's career in all possible ways; the pure distilled joy of his invention, his previously Melodramatic plots are here whipped into a creamy souffle of confused identities and his seven main characters confound and delight with every whiplash line of epigrammatic pleasure.  It is impossible to stage any play by Oscar Wilde without seeing it refracted through the cut-glass shards of his downfall, in which EARNEST sits as an innocent bystander.

Wilde's state of mind during it's writing is reflected in the what-the-eye-doesn't see engine of it's plot - he wrote the play while holidaying with his wife Constance and his children in Worthing (which explains the town's importance in the play) but as soon as they left, in moved Lord Alfred Douglas.  It turned out to be yet another unhappy experience: Wilde nursed Douglas through a sudden bout of influenza but when he himself became sick, Douglas left him to fend for himself.  Six months after it's initial writing, it was premiered at the St James' Theatre and had been rewritten and reduced from four acts to three.  

The successful opening night was marred by the threat of Lord Alfred's father, the Marquess of Queensberry, who intended to disrupt the curtain call so Wilde had the management rescind his ticket and bar him from the premises but four days later he left the infamous calling card at Wilde's club, the Albermarle, calling Wilde a sodomite.  Wilde sued... and the rest is sad history.  Sir George Alexander, manager of the St. James' Theatre and the original Jack Worthing, took Wilde's name off the posters to try and weather the storm but eventually closed the play after 86 performances.

But EARNEST continued to delight audiences - albeit on small tours and 'fringe' performances while Oscar languished in prison - and two years after his death in 1900, George Alexander revived it at the St James'.  Since then the play has been revived countless times and is now rightly acclaimed as one of the greatest comedies in the English language, not least because of Anthony Asquith's glorious 1952 film with the titanic performances of Edith Evans, Michael Redgrave, Michael Dennison, Joan Greenwood, Dorothy Tutin, Margaret Rutherford and Miles Malleson.

All the film cast's souls will rest easy knowing their hold on the roles are still firm.  As I said Michael Fentiman's directorial choices continually butt in to the production; they cannot really stop the glory of the words but his cheapening of the characters begins to irk after a while.  The sooner Fentiman understands that the audience are there for the play, not his ideas around it, the better.  It's too late for EARNEST however so we shall press on.

It's a production where the women come out on top but only just.  Sophie Thompson's comedic experience is on full display as she swoops and honks her way through Lady Bracknell's dazzling lines but has a touch of humanity about her so the character is less of a gorgon than usual.  Pippa Nixon seems to take her lead from Sophie, her Gwendolen is definitely her mother's daughter with her imperious air and directness.  Fiona Button plays Cecily Cardew with an equal boldness so their second act confrontation was a trifle overpowering - it didn't help that Fentiman has them stuffing each others mouths with the bread and butter.  No, I don't know either.  Stella Gonet was off so we saw her understudy Alana Ramsey as Miss Prism and she was ok.

So to the men... Jeremy Swift was fairly anonymous as Canon Chasuble, just... nothing there.  Mchael Fentiman's heavy-handed approach to the play was all over the actors playing Jack and Algernon: Jacob Fortune-Lloyd (a name to change away from) actually managed to make some impression as Jack especially in the 'interview' scene with Lady Bracknell but in the second half, as the complications and coincidences crash head-on, Fentiman has directed him to play it like Daffy Duck at his most uncontrolled.  I felt sorry for the actor...

The Algernon of Fehinti Balogun was just a mess, he appears to have appeared in several off-west end roles - including ensemble work in Glenda Jackson's KING LEAR - so what on earth made Fentiman think he could carry this lead role in his first proper West End play?  I am sure he is capable of acting but high comedy is certainly not his forte: instead of pitching his lines up and out, he blotted them as he gabbled their delivery.  It says a lot about the production that the most memorable male performance is Geoffrey Freshwater's butler Lane in the opening scene.

And of course, as it's 2018, Fentiman ramps up the subtext, as if it really needs to be spelled out in neon letters instead of leaving it to bubble along in the background.  So we have Algernon absurdly snogging Lane his manservant and doing bizarre nose-rubbing with Jack when they meet in Jack's country house while Gwendolen acts like she has a vibrator up her skirts at the mere thought of marrying Jack aka Ernest.  It's all so reductive and does Wilde's masterpiece a serious disservice.

That there is still fun to be had is a tribute to the indestructible magic of the play.  It's just a shame that Classic Spring's excellent season ends with such a mis-firing production.  One wonders who Dromgoole might go for a possible second season, there are plenty to choose from but would they be commercial enough?  The obvious choices almost cancel themselves out by being well-catered for such as Shaw, Chekhov, Rattigan, Orton, Pinter and O'Neill so a less obvious choice might be interesting.

AN IDEAL HUSBAND at the Vaudeville - Wilde casting

Dominic Dromgoole's theatre company Classic Spring is coming into the home stretch now in it's year-long season of plays by Oscar Wilde; unsurprisingly THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST will close the season but before that we have the first of the two plays Wilde presented in the fateful year of 1895, AN IDEAL HUSBAND.

It has been thrilling to see the plays presented together and to fully appreciate the fizzing wit and barnstorming melodrama in A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE and LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN.  However AN IDEAL HUSBAND, although it has these elements, seems to have Wilde trying a more through-drama with less chattering characters swamping the storyline.

Sir Robert Chiltern is a high-flying member of the Government, married to a woman who holds the view - Wilde's young wives always initially hold dogmatic views on things - that if you have done wrong you should be punished.  What Gertrude Chiltern doesn't know is that her husband's whole standing in society is based on a shady secret - he gave a Baron news that the Government were going to back the building of the Suez Canal a few days before it was announced, giving the Baron time to invest in the deal and make himself a fortune.  The Baron's financial recompense to Chiltern bankrolled his start in political life.  Oh and by the by, how remarkable that Oscar should hit on the Suez Canal as a possible source of Government embarrassment.

At a soiree given by the Chilterns, their friend Lady Markby arrives with the glamorous but mysterious Mrs Cheeverly, who reveals to Chiltern that she was the late Baron's former lover and has in her possession Chiltern's incriminating Suez letter.  Her price for silence is that Chiltern puts pressure on the Government to push through a similar canal deal in Argentina which Cheeverly and her friends have invested in but which Chiltern knows is doomed to failure.  Mrs Cheeverly was a contemporary of Gertrude's at school and they always despised each other, which is another reason for her to wreak havoc on the couple.

Chiltern capitulates but when Mrs Cheeverly, in a row with Gertrude, reveals the secret to her, Gertrude is appalled that her "Ideal Husband" has broken the law.  Gertrude demands that he admits his wrongdoing even though it will ruin them.  In desperation, Robert confides to his best friend, the pleasure-loving Lord Goring, his quandary but Goring insists he keeps quiet and allow him to see to Mrs Cheeverly, whom he was once engaged to!  While all this is going on, Lord Goring is appalled that his father is putting pressure on him to finally marry - could Chiltern's sparky younger sister Mabel be about to get her "Ideal Husband"?

As Oscar himself said "The good ended happily, and the bad unhappily.  That is what fiction means" but not before he has taken us through twists and turns over the allotted 24 hours of the play's timeline.  It is a play I like very much - the two sides of the narrative intersect every so often and there are of course the killer lines dropped like jewels on velvet in the text, oddly enough mostly by the gossiping Lady Markby in the second act when she comes to tea with Mrs Cheeverly - it's like Oscar thought "you want the gags - here they are".  So we get scintillating lines like "She ultimately was so broken-hearted that she went into a convent, or on to the operatic stage, I forget which. No; I think it was decorative art-needlework she took up. I know she had lost all sense of pleasure in life" - lines that pop and fizz in the mind and that so betray the debt that Joe Orton had to Wilde.

The film version in 1999 was excellent with the perfect Lord Goring in Rupert Everett, but oddly enough the last time I saw it on stage was again at the Vaudeville Theatre in 2011 in a production that at the time I felt had "no unity of style, time and again a character would come on stage and suddenly you are forced to adapt to a new acting style so you are never sure on which level the play truly sits"  Here there certainly was that unity of style thanks to Jonathan Church's well-paced direction but the production felt topsy-turvy with it's casting.  I posited the idea that the actors had all called their agents and said "Why haven't I been asked to do the Classic Spring season - get me in one quick" and they have all landed up in AN IDEAL HUSBAND.

The quasar of oddity was Freddie Fox's casting as Lord Goring; in itself it wasn't a bad performance - particularly in the second act - but his youth threw the rest of the characters awry.  There was no way Nathaniel Parker's middle-aged Sir Robert would ever have had the late-twenties Lord Goring as his confidante and possible saviour from disgrace, while the idea that Fox's Lord Goring could have been engaged to Mrs Cheeverly years before simply stretched believe to breaking point, particularly as this is a major turning point in the plot's resolution.  Similarly, Frances Barber's gurgling, predatory Mrs Cheeverly must have been held back MANY terms at school if she was a contemporary of Sally Bretton's priggish Gertrude Chiltern.

It was a casting coup to get real-life father and son Edward Fox and Freddie Fox to play the fictional father and son of Lord Caversham and Lord Goring and they certainly had an easy playing style together on stage - Edward Fox is now sounding like a member of a lost Hapsburg royal house as his vowels are so clipped, he really was never the same after playing Edward VIII was he?  He also seemed odd casting initially as he broke the rhythm of the scenes he popped in and out of, but as with Freddie, came into his own in the second act when Caversham has more substantial scenes - and one absolutely killer exit line, played to perfection.

Other pleasures dotted among the odd cast were Susan Hampshire who was sweetly cutting as Lady Markby (despite the odd stumble), Tim Wallers as Goring's butler Phipps - only on for one scene but stealing everything in the scene apart from the doorknobs - and Faith Omole, in her West End debut,  as a spirited and cheeky Mabel Chiltern. The best performance, unsurprisingly, was the unstoppable Frances Barber as Mrs Cheeverly; in this oddly-cast production, she was the perfect fit - even if some of her costumes were not.  I am sure they were designed to be over-the-top but at times they got in the way of her performance.

Cut from the same cloth as Mrs Erlynne in LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN - mysterious woman living on her uppers in Europe returns to London to intrigue society - here, Mrs Cheeverly has no real redeeming features - which is why I love her!  However I would say that underneath it all, she is a Modern Woman, living on her own and by her own design, using the traits that if she were a man would possibly take her far.  In the tying-up-all-the-loose-ends of the last act it is a damn shame that she vanishes from it, I yearned to see her one more time - she is facing an uncertain future with her investments lost but you know she will land on her feet - or her back - but always on her own terms.

Of course it is impossible to watch any of the plays without overlaying it with Oscar's fate: despite the wide-range of characters his authorial voice is so strong you cannot help but see and hear him behind each of them.  The play premiered in January 1895 and was still running three months later when Oscar brought Lord Queensberry to court on the ill-fated charge of Criminal Libel; the collapse of that trial led to his arrest for Gross Indecency and all that followed...

While hearing the lines about your past indiscretions catching up with you, it's the following speech by Mrs Cheeverly that rips through the intervening years with a startling prescience:

"Sir Robert, you know what your English newspapers are like. ... Think of their loathsome joy, of the delight they would have in dragging you down, of the mud and mire they would plunge you in. Think of the hypocrite with his greasy smile penning his leading article, and arranging the foulness of the public placard"

Oh Oscar.

 

LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN at the Vaudeville - Looking at the stars...

Dominic Dromgoole's Classic Spring Theatre Company has been set up to stage the works of great British dramatists from the 19th and 20th Centuries in the theatres where they were first presented.  Their first season is celebrating the work of Oscar Wilde at the Vaudeville Theatre, a theatre Wilde knew well, and after an excellent launch with Dromgoole's own production of A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, we now have LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN, fluttering away in a production directed by Kathy Burke.

Wilde's comedy of manners was first staged in 1892 and has been revived frequently since as well as being the basis for five film versions although it's fair to say that none of these have lived long in the collective memory.  I had only read the play so was keen to experience it properly, although I wondered at the choice of Burke as director.  Luckily I need not have worried as her production has a humanity and warmth to it that one might not expect from Wilde's comedy of shaken morals among the English upper class.

Lord and Lady Windermere have been married for two years and he has given her an expensive fan as a gift for her 21st birthday.  However two titled friends, Lord Darlington and the Duchess of Berwick, spoil her day by telling her that it is the talk of society that her husband has been making secretive visits to Mrs Erlynne, an older woman of scandalous reputation.  The priggishly moral Lady Windermere confronts her husband who admits he has been paying Mrs Erlynne money but says he has not been unfaithful; when he asks her to invite Mrs Erlynne to her birthday ball she refuses, but Windermere invites her anyway.

Mrs Erlynne arrives at the party and causes a sensation but Lady Windermere ignores her.  Alone with Lord Darlington he takes advantage of her upset and invites her to leave her husband for him as Darlington has always secretly loved her.  The confused Lady Windermere refuses and Darlington leaves saying he will leave the country the next day.  However when she sees how her husband stays with Mrs Erlynne and that their family friend 'Tuppy' Lorton is equally smitten with her, Lady Windermere changes her mind and after leaving a note, follows Darlington to his home.

Mrs. Erlynne finds the note but destroys it before the husband can see it; of course that's when we discover that Mrs. Erlynne is actually Lady Windermere's long-presumed-dead mother.  She too fled her husband and baby for another man but when he left her she found herself alone.  Under an assumed name she has returned to London and blackmailed Lord Windermere into bankrolling her to a new start in society.  However now her daughter looks about to repeat her own actions, Mrs. Erlynne will stop at nothing to save her from a life of shame...

I am sure the play could be acted in "the traditional style" - lots of declamatory readings, the cast in frozen tableaux and heavy brocade and Victorian excess everywhere - but Kathy Burke keeps the action souffle-like and it is a production full of air and light.  This is helped immeasurably by designer Paul Wills' stripped-back, simple set and costume designs as well as the chosen colour palette of soft hues of pink, purple and blues - it really makes for a delightful production to watch.

Kathy Burke is also helped with a cast who play with a twinkle in their eye which makes the sudden melodramatic moments seem all the more serious; they also all play with a disregard that they are saying some of Wilde's most memorable lines, there is no signalling to the audience as if to say "You are all going to know what I am about to say..."

After having graduated from drama school only last year, it would be unlikely that Grace Molony's Lady Windermere had any particular depth but she played it with a pleasing sincerity as did Joshua James in the tricky role of Lord Windermere who came into his own in the final scene of compromise and keeping secrets.  I also liked Joseph Marcell as "Tuppy" the Windermere's friend who finds himself besotted with the mysterious Mrs. Erlynne but fearful of her reputation; he played it with just the right air of happy befuddlement.

Kevin Bishop is an interesting choice as Lord Darlington who is another of Wilde's charming but dangerous titled womanizers but he fought the temptation to barnstorm lines like "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" and made him a very subtle cad.

The real surprise - for me at lest - was the delightful performance of Jennifer Saunders as the self-entitled and snobbish Duchess of Berwick, a woman at the centre of her own universe and eager to know all the gossip.  I had fears that she might play it too over the top but she fitted into the tone of the production and seemed very at home within it.  Her character's relatively short appearances onstage is helpfully padded out with the Duchess leading the audience in a front-cloth sing-song.  It actually was interesting to watch her in performance, seeing her ease onstage and delivering her witty rejoinders and put-downs with the sure knowledge of how to land a laugh; Dominic Dromgoole... I think you have found your Lady Bracknell for the upcoming production of THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST. 

Samantha Spiro was an inspired choice as Mrs. Erlynne, sensuous and languidly in command of the men's slavish attentions but able to become passionately sympathetic in defending the daughter she has returned to but realizes will have to leave again without her identity being revealed.  The final scene where she makes her only demand - a photo of her now-grown daughter and grand-child - was played with a lightness of touch which hinted at the emotion beneath.  She really has a uniquely quicksilver personality on stage.

It is impossible to watch any of Wilde's classic plays without looking for clues relating to the downfall that awaited him only three years after the play's premiere, and indeed it is interesting that Wilde wrote of a wife finding out about her husband's clandestine visits to a disreputable woman in the same year that Lord Alfred Douglas started to introduce him to male prostitute 'renters'.  Interesting too that the play's seemingly happy end for the married couple is based on the keeping of secrets from each other.

I highly recommend LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN which runs until April 7th but it will also be screened in cinemas on the 20th March.  Classic Spring's next production is AN IDEAL HUSBAND... and yes Constant Reader, tickets are already booked!

A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE at the Vaudeville Theatre - Wilde Women

This year has seen three top directors setting up their own companies: Nicholas Hytner has his Bridge Theatre with productions stretching into 2018, Marianne Elliott launched a production company and, after bringing her NT production of ANGELS IN AMERICA to Broadway, will direct Sondheim's COMPANY in London, and Dominic Dromgoole who is the ex-artistic director of the Globe - before the ghastly reign of Emma Rice - has launched the Classic Spring Theatre Company, it's mission to stage classic drama in the proscenium theatres they were written for.  It's inaugural season is rather spectacular - a year-long run at the Vaudeville celebrating the four major plays of Oscar Wilde.

It's first production is A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE, first performed in 1893.  It's a play I have read but never seen so I jumped at the chance to see it in the very theatre where Wilde saw Ibsen's HEDDA GABLER in 1891.  Indeed Wilde was very familiar with this stretch of the Strand as he had lived in a street opposite the Vaudeville when he first arrived in London in 1879.

After the success of his first major play LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN, the actor/manager Herbert Beerbohm Tree asked Wilde to write a play for his company and Wilde wrote A WOMAN OF NO IMPORTANCE while on holiday in Norfolk with the dreaded Lord Alfred Douglas.  It was an instant success even though Wilde disliked Beerbohm Tree's performance as the caddish Lord Illingworth.  Of course in only two years time, Wilde's world came crashing down around him and you cannot help but look for clues and hidden messages within the plays.

Lady Jane is hosting a small party of guests including the imperious Lady Caroline and her long-suffering husband Sir John, the free-thinking Mrs Allonby, the witty and urbane politician Lord Illingworth, and an orphan American visitor Miss Worsley who is attracted to young Gerald Arbuthnot whose mother is a friend of Lady Jane.  Illingworth offers Gerald a position as his secretary and Lady Jane invites his mother to join them; Mrs Arbuthnot replies that she will visit after visiting the poor of the parish, which sparks comment among the leisured-class guests.  Illingworth sees the note while flirting with Mrs Allonby who notices his change in mood but Illingworth laughs it off saying she is a "woman of no importance".

Mrs Arbuthnot arrives as Miss Worsley is denouncing the English upper-classes and, when introduced to Lord Illingworth, tells Gerald she is against him working as his secretary.  All is revealed when they are left alone - Mrs Arbuthnot and Lord Illingworth were once lovers and Gerald is their son, but she was left destitute when Illingworth refused to marry her.  She begs him not to take her son away from her but Illingworth refuses saying Gerald must choose. Gerald later tells his mother he will leave her but is interrupted by Miss Worsley - who had previously shocked Mrs Arbuthnot with her puritanical views on unwed mothers - who is in tears because Illingworth has made a sexual advance.  Gerald attempts to strike Illingworth but Mrs Arbuthnot stops him by finally telling him Illingworth is his father.

The next morning Gerald writes to Illingworth demanding he marry his mother but Mrs Arbuthnot is appalled when he tells her; she will not marry the man who has caused them such misery.  When Miss Worsley overhears Mrs Arbuthnot saying that society's view of her as an unmarried mother means nothing as she has devoted her life to raising her son to be decent and honourable, the American begs for Mrs Arbuthnot's forgiveness and tells mother and son she wants them to return with her to America as her new family.

Illingworth arrives but Mrs Arbuthnot refuses his offer of money for Gerald: they do not need his tainted wealth.  They argue when he sees Gerald's unfinished letter and she tells him her love for Gerald and hatred of Illingworth feed off each other.  She strikes him with his gloves and he leaves chastened. Gerald and Miss Worsley discover her alone in tears and, when Miss Worsley again suggests they join her in her return home, they agree.  Gerald sees the dropped gloves and asks who had visited but Mrs Arbuthnot says not to bother it was "a man of no importance".

Dromgoole's direction certainly holds true to Classic Spring's idea of presenting Wilde's play of being seen on the stage as it was intended when written, indeed he has truly taken us back in time by having Anne Reid's Lady Jane and her servants appear before the front curtain during scenery changes to sing Victorian songs - the sickly Victorian sentiment of "A Boy's Best Friend Is His Mother" and "Father's A Drunkard and Mother Is Dead" illustrates the double-standards Wilde was illustrating in his tale of Mrs Arbuthnot.

The production has had rather sniffy reviews but I found it a great opportunity to see Wilde's play without any added artifice and played as close to the spirit of the play as possible - each act leads up to a declamatory curtain line but the melodrama is played for truth, not moustache-twirling or tableaux staging.  The play does occasionally flag but I think this is more to do with the many characters who all pop in and out in the scenes in Lady Jane's house; indeed as Mrs Arbuthnot does not appear until halfway through the second act, it is hard to know up until then where exactly the focus of the play is.

What is undeniable is the stinging quality of Wilde's aphorisms about men, women and society and with this cast they are placed nicely without any overly-obvious verbal signposting to say "the next thing I am about to say is REALLY famous".  Indeed Dromgoole's production shows more opportunities for the women in the cast to shine, not too difficult with the casting of Eve Best, Anne Reid, Eleanor Bron and Emma Fielding.

Emma Fielding prowls and slinks around Lady Jane's house eyeing up Lord Illingworth - her equal in deceit - but Fielding's seductive maneater has less chance to shine when the main plot kicks in which is a pity.  What I liked about Dromgoole's production is the characters intelligence is their main asset, and they are played with nuanced performances that never over-spill into caricature, in particular the obviously Wildean characters such as Lord Illingworth, Lady Caroline and Lady Jane are played by Dominic Rowan, Eleanor Bron and Anne Reid with a dry naturalness unlike the usual "raised-eyebrow, eye on the dress circle" approach to his witty upper-class characters.

Unsurprisingly there are problems with the younger members of the cast but I grew to like Harry Lister Smith as the heart-on-the-sleeve Gerald Arbuthnot - despite the Ed Sheeran hair - but Crystal Clarke as the visiting Miss Worsley was the production's one disappointment; her clanging one-note sounded through her entire performance especially the long second act speech she has denouncing the English upper-class; you can hear the Irishman's provocation in Wilde's words but Clarke's stilted delivery is shown up against the silky, assured playing of her co-stars.

There are notable supporting performances however from Dromgoole's Globe performers Sam Cox as the under-the-thumb Sir John, William Gaunt as the visiting Reverend who booms out his wife's many illnesses with relish, and Paul Rider is a delightfully sleazy Kelvil, an MP who lectures on morality but who slithers over any woman within arm's reach; to see him drunkenly attempt to sit on the arm of Mrs Arbuthnot's chair was an added delight.

Eve Best has become one of our most heartfelt actresses - she has an inbuilt emotional quality which makes her character's pain plumb real depths - and that is in abundance here.  Her suffering is shot through with a wisdom that avoids any cloying sentimentality that might trip up other performers and she delivers a character that you believe every word has sprung direct from her own thoughts.  I had to hoot though as I had said earlier that I had seen her play one-too-many sad daughters who seemed to find a moment to wipe her eyes or nose with a hanky which was then thrust up her the sleeve of her dress - she only went and did it again here!  I was left to muse that maybe this emotional truthfulness might have hampered her being able to climb to the elemental greatness of the last scene in ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.

As I said, I admired Dominic Dromgoole's direction and in particular, the way he allows the audience to draw out the ever-topical themes of women's abuse by more powerful men, political and moral hypocrisy and in particular for me, the way that the play's title was effortlessly put into context: Lord Illingworth's dismissal of Mrs Arbuthnot as "a woman of no importance" carries within it the patriarchal disdain of a woman who is an unwanted trifle while Mrs Arbuthnot's calling him "a man of no importance" at the end comes from her humanity, making him meaningless despite all his wealth and influence.

I am now looking forward to my next visit to the season, Simon Callow's reading of DE PROFUNDIS, the lengthy letter written in Reading Prison to Lord Alfred Douglas, looking back on the events that led to him to that desolate cell.

THE TEMPEST at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse: it's going to be a bumpy night...

So here we are, the final production in the Globe's staging of the last four plays of William Shakespeare which have laid bare the hidden and not-so-hidden links within them.  Fathers lose daughters, mothers vanish or are never present, love is discovered by chance, physical journeys are bound upon and safe havens sought while coincidence exists alongside magic...

Oddly enough I have only seen THE TEMPEST once before on stage, I seem to have seen filmed or tv versions more often.  The only stage version seen was Sam Mendes' dreary production at the Old Vic in 2010 with an under-whelming Stephen Dillaine as Prospero and the mixed UK and US cast turning the text into a right fugue for tinhorns.

No such problems for Dominic Dromgoole's production at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse which despite it's spartan, fixed-design stage, still managed to be infused with the right amount of mystery and imagination to suggest the more magical moments of the play.

If I have a criticism of the production it would be that it seemed a little too benign at times - moments such as the two murder plots to kill both Alonso and Prospero seemed to come and go without causing too many ripples of alarm.

Tim McMullan is not usually an actor I warm to - his sonorous voice can be too distracting - but I enjoyed his performance as Prospero, the Duke of Milan who, 12 years before the start of the play, was overthrown by his jealous brother and bundled aboard an unsafe boat with his three year-old daughter Miranda and set loose on the sea.  McMullan had the right commanding presence and was a believable magus, capable of bending the elements to shipwreck his brother and retinue of lords onto the strange island where he himself was washed up with his daughter.  He also spoke Prospero's last two famous speeches - "Our revels now are ended..." and "Now my charms are all o'erthrown..." with great simplicity.

Phoebe Pryce - daughter of Jonathan who we saw as Jessica in the Globe's MERCHANT OF VENICE last year - was good as Miranda, a dutiful daughter but eager to fall in love with the King of Naples' son Ferdinand when he is separated from the others during the shipwreck and there was also an interesting performance from Pippa Nixon as Ariel, Prospero's spirit servant who also is aching to be free.

Fisayo Akinade was a bit too obvious and one-note as Prospero's subjugated native slave Caliban but there was better fun to be found in the low comedy antics of Trevor Fox as the permanently soused Stephano and the flamboyant Trinculo of Dominic Rowan, his comedy 'business' at times threatened to capsize his scenes but he is such an engaging actor that they were great fun.

Another reason for the success of the production was the sympathetic performance of Joseph Marcell as Gonzalo, Prospero's friend who came to his aid when he was deposed by filling his boat into exile with provisions and, more importantly, with books on magic which Prospero has used to his advantage.

Jonathan Fensom, although constrained by the afore-mentioned playing space, made good use of the stage and made necessity a virtue by having a large flat rock in the middle of the stage which was turned around for each scene giving the actors something to clamber over and around, simple but effective.  Stephen Warbeck's music was ever-present and engaging throughout.  Needless to say, Prospero's lovely parting words asking for the audience's applause to free him from the island were undercut by the usual end-of-play meaningless jig about.

The Globe is to be applauded - and I did! - for staging these last four plays so one can make connections with their recurring themes of love and reconciliation, now bring on the events to honour the 400 years since Shakespeare's "little life was rounded with a sleep".

PERICLES aka Shakespeare's Round-The-Med Revue at the Sam Wanamaker Playhouse

This year saw quite a few visits to the Globe Theatre to see several of the productions under their Justice & Mercy season and, now that it's colder, we are booked to see their four late Shakespeare productions in their atmospheric Sam Wanamaker Playhouse.

First off the rank was the departing Globe artistic director Dominic Dromgoole's production of PERICLES, a lesser Shakespeare which he co-wrote with the little-known George Wilkins.  It's disjointed feel is probably down to this partnership, scholars suspect that they split the play down the middle with Wilkins taking the first few acts and Shakespeare picking it up towards the end - which would explain why the play feels more involving towards the end but it's still not a play I would go out of my way for.

The trouble is the plot which piles on thinly plotted characters and absurd situations which mostly happen offstage but are relayed to the audience by the show's narrator Gower (the name of the author who wrote the story the play is based on) but who here is played by the ever-twinkling Sheila Reid.  Since her National Theatre days at the Old Vic under Olivier's direction, Reid has been giving constantly good performances but she can sometimes play cutesy and she does that here, almost distracting the audience from the melodramatic plot twists she tells us about.

Was there ever a more tiresome lead role than Pericles?  Up and down the Mediterranean coastline he wanders bringing chaos and misery wherever he goes... he arrives in Antioch to marry the King's daughter but discovers their secret incestuous relationship so he flees, pursued by the King's assassin, back to his home city of Tyre but the assassin turns up there so he is off again to Tarsus where he relieves the city of it's famine but, feeling unsafe, sets off again where he - and us - endure the first of two storms at sea...

One is reminded of Thelma Ritter's caustic line in ALL ABOUT EVE "Everything but the bloodhounds snappin' at your rear end"!  One feels Pericles really needs his life set to a oh-why-me song a la Travis but he is washed up on the shores of Pentapolis where, with the King's eager help, he marries the princess Thaisa.  You would think that would make him stay in one place - but then he hears that the incestuous King and his daughter have been killed by a lightning bolt (they really don't write 'em like this anymore) and he journeys back to Tyre in safety.

But safety isn't Pericles' top quality and low and behold, another storm at sea happens just as Thaisa is giving birth - come on, you just KNOW she dies and is buried at sea where she is washed up at Ephesus and revived by a physician wherein she goes off to be a high priestess of Diana while Pericles leaves Marina, his baby girl, with the King and Queen of Tarsus while he wanders off again.  Pericles is not a good role model for single parenting as the Queen starts to develop a psychotic hatred for Marina for getting more acclaim than her own child.  So she hires an assassin...

Yes this *could* be where you came in but one starts to discern the occasional insight in the writing and you know that Shakespeare is on the scene. I can imagine him thinking "What has Wilkins done here?" and throws in a dollop of sex straight out of MEASURE FOR MEASURE when Marina is kidnapped by pirates and sold to a brothel.  Finally it gets going with a few decent laughs!!

What makes PERICLES worth the climb is how Shakespeare uses his part of the play to shift the play away from the dreary title character's perambulations and leads us more into explorations of fathers and daughters, magic, reconciliations, humorous supporting characters and a feeling of tragedy averted.  A prime example is Marina's reuniting with Pericles after so many years apart; only a year or so before Shakespeare had given us a similar scene in KING LEAR which ended in nihilist brutality, here all is forgiveness and harmony.

For all it's absurdity, Dominic Dromgoole certainly kept the action moving on the bare Wanamaker stage with Jonathan Fensom's spare design.  I had seen the play once before at the National Theatre in 1994 which was pretty irritating but I think this one will tide me over for a while.  A major problem with this production was the dull performance by James Garnon as the titular Prince of Tyre.  He's not an actor I particularly care for and his gurning delivery of his speeches failed to move.  Sadly it appears he is beloved at the Globe (so I presume he's cheap).

Much more eye-catching were Jessica Baglow as the tyrannically virginal Marina, Dennis Herdman as the randy pimp Bolt and Dorothea Myer-Bennett as both the put-upon Thaisa and the inexplicably murderous Queen Dionyza.

I am looking forward to seeing THE WINTER'S TALE, CYMBELINE and THE TEMPEST at the Wanamaker Playhouse in the coming months as they are all stronger plays than this Greek's Own adventure.  Oh and no thanks at all to former Globe artistic director Mark Rylance who occasionally kneed me in the back on the Playhouse's absurdly cramped backless seating.  You would also think someone so versed in the theatre would remove his hat in the auditorium too.

MEASURE FOR MEASURE: back to the beginning...

In 2004 I took an afternoon off working in the poster shop to have a theatrical adventure.  Although the Globe Southwark had been open for seven years I had never had the urge to go before I heard that Sophie Thompson was playing the virtuous Isabella opposite Mark Rylance as The Duke in John Dove's production of MEASURE FOR MEASURE.

Despite an engaging performance from Sophie, I didn't feel any particular urge to go back to the theatre for another seven years!  But last year we had a good run of productions there which has continued this year so it was always going to be an interesting experience to return to MEASURE FOR MEASURE again.

This production was directed by departing Artistic Director Dominic Dromgoole and seemed similar to the 2004 one in playing up the comedy and letting the dark heart of the play take a back seat.  Sadly it is not a play I warm to: it seems to be full of scenes which are full of exposition of what has happened offstage - it can get quite frustrating after a while.

The play also seems a trifle broken-backed.  Angelo appears quite a lot in the first half but then vanishes for most of the second half - we are told how the revenge on him is plotted and has come about which feels odd for such a dominant part.

Maybe I need to see a production that downplays the antics of the bawdy folk.  In Dromgoole's production all the emphasis was laid on the laughs and none on the disturbing ambiguous morality.  Maybe that is too difficult to do when you have to provide the obligatory song and jig at the end?

The Duke of Venice decides to experience for himself how amoral the city has become and disguises himself as a monk while handing the reins of power over to his deputy Angelo and his more understanding brother Escalus.  Angelo seizes his chance to crack down on all that affronts his puritanical morality, and in the midst of closing down the brothels, he also sentences to death Claudio who has committed the crime of sleeping with his fiancee Juliet.

Claudio gets word to his novice sister Isabella to intercede on his behalf but despite her impassioned pleas, Angelo refuses.  However Angelo is a typical politician - he preaches morality while being less than pure himself.  He had previously promised a woman, Mariana, that they would marry then dropped her when she proved less wealthy than he thought and now he tells Isabella that he will free Claudio - if Isabella will sleep with him.

Isabella wrestles with her conscience and she cannot give in to her brother's pleadings to sacrifice her virginity.  Angered by Angelo's draconian measures, the disguised Duke finds a plan to trap his deputy but time is running out...

I think it would certainly have helped had our Angelo dominated the production but Kurt Egyiawan's performance was as weighty as a gadfly which was a huge disappointment.  Mariah Gale's Isabella was steadfast but also lacked any inner fire to really make her claim centre-stage.

The performances that had any element in humour were the ones that seemed to connect more: there wasn't much ambiguity in Dominic Rowan's disguised Duke Vincentio but he found all the humour he could especially in the final scenes when he has to to reveal his two identities.  Brendan O'Hea was an outrageous Lucio, stalking around the stage like a camp ostrich, trying to inveigle himself in with the most powerful character.  The spirit of Kenneth Williams was abroad the night we went!

I very much liked Paul Rider's sympathetic Escalus as well as Trevor Fox's pugnacious Geordie Pompey, always ready to defend his amoral lifestyle.  There was an odd performance from Dean Nolan as Elbow the Constable who appears to be channeling James Cordon's 'look at me I'm fat' schtick and an insistent but not-very-successful Mistress Overdone from Petra Massey.  The production marked a first however - my first Globe stage bare arse courtesy of Dennis Herdman.

A problem play which was enjoyable enough but not totally delivering on what the play's real message is.  Oh well, on to the next one...

ROMEO AND JULIET at The Globe

On Monday we made our way through the Bankside Bank Holiday crowds to visit the Globe Theatre for the first time this year - believe me, there will be a few blogs from there this season!  Odd as up until last year it was a theatre I was not keen on but with several involving 2014 productions (TITUS ANDRONICUS, ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA, JULIUS CAESAR) this year we are going Globe crazy.

My two previous visits to productions of Shakespeare's tale of star-cross'd lovers have left me rather unsatisfied - the most recent being the underwhelming National Theatre one in 2000 which was only memorable for Chiwetel Ejiofor's Romeo.  Neither was a patch on Baz Luhrmann's wonderful updated 1996 film with it's charismatic pairing of Leonardo DiCaprio and Claire Danes.

Although I was apprehensive that the Globe's production is a touring version with a cast of only 8 actors it actually proved to be a good production that certainly concentrated the mind for the "two hours traffic" of the stage.

Being the Globe needless to say the production was bookended with a song and dance routine, this time a frantic Eastern European-style tune.  I know it's all part of the roister-doistering Globe ethos but it's a bit jarring after the big death scene at the end.

As I said it's only a cast of 8 so there is a lot of doubling-up - almost comically so at one point when Matt Doherty as Tybalt walks upstage, slings on a robe and is back as Paris!  Maybe one more actor would have given the rest of the cast at least a chance to catch their breath.

Luckily Samuel Valentine's Romeo and Cassie Layton's Juliet don't get to double up - that really would be daft!  I really liked Cassie Layton's performance, she spoke the verse with great passion and made the most of her soliloquies, Valentine (ha!) was suitably trouble-tossed as our ginger Romeo but couldn't quite match Layton in the desperate passion stakes.

The stand-out supporting performance was Sarah Higgins as the Nurse, played with a broad Scottish accent, who stole every scene she was in with brio.  Also making an impression was the louche tattooed Mercutio of Steffan Donnelly (sadly his Queen Mab speech was nearly drowned out by a circling helicopter!) and the muscular Tybalt, clueless servant Peter and impassioned Paris of Matt Doherty.

Dominic Dromgoole (in his last season as Artistic Director) and Tim Hoare's direction focuses the action well with a stripped down production acted in and around a tall trestle platform and gives us a ROMEO AND JULIET which grips and moves in equal measure.

As I said the production is touring around the UK until August so it is well worth checking the website to see if it's coming near you.