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.

LOVE IN IDLENESS at the Menier - Rattigan Reimagined

Just when it looked like the revivals of plays by Terence Rattigan were over, up pops another one at the Menier Chocolate Factory, a highly unlikely home for this writer.

It turns out that LOVE IN IDLENESS is a bit of a cut-and-shunt job.  In 1944 Terence Rattigan wanted to write a play which reflected the conflicts of the time - when confidence in winning the war was tempered by worries of what the country would do next - as well as write a typical Shaftesbury Avenue comedy star vehicle.  Gertrude Lawrence turned it down unread but the acting (and married) partnership of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne picked it up.

The title was LESS THAN KIND which hints at the play's riffing on HAMLET but Lunt felt it's plot - young man burning with Socialist idealism returns from wartime evacuation to Canada to discover that his widowed mother has moved in with an industrialist currently serving in Churchill's wartime cabinet - was not humorous enough for him so Rattigan rewrote it, dropping most of the confrontations over politics.  Later on he recanted saying that he wished he had kept the play as it was and not bowed to star power.

Fast forward to 2016: Trevor Nunn was looking for another Rattigan project after his successful revival of FLARE PATH in 2011 and discovered the two similar projects and after urging from the Rattigan estate to meld the two scripts - reinstating some of the political debate but also keeping it light and amusing - we now have LOVE IN IDLENESS.  Incidentally the unperformed LESS THAN KIND was given a belated debut in 2011 too at the tiny Jermyn Street Theatre (home of the hags, don't get me started).

I must admit to some trepidation at the thought of Trevor Nunn imposing his love of playing length on what sounded like a frothy comedy (and it does come down after nearly three hours) but remarkably his production delighted in it's brio and in the winning performances.  True, Rattigan weights the plot in favour of the industrialist Sir John Fletcher but when he is played so delightfully by Anthony Head it's a point one is willing to concede.

I was also hugely surprised by Eve Best as the high society-loving Olivia Brown.  Best is *ahem* best at roles which usually find her mournful and constantly wiping away tears or blowing her nose on a hankie secreted up the arm of her dowdy dress but here she blossoms as a gushingly over-indulgent mother but whose sense of fun is nicely balanced with a sense of fair play.  There were several times during the play that I thought what a nice part this would have been for Emma Thompson to have played had she not seemingly turned her back on theatre (SWEENEY TODD withstanding).

As I said Anthony Head is utterly charming as Sir John, possibly the best I have seen him on stage.  He captures the combination of a believable powerful man of influence while also being totally thrown by the emotional devastation that Olivia's truculent son brings with his arrival back from Canada.  As Michael, Olivia's son determined to break up his mother from a man who represents everything he despises, Edward Bluemel starts a bit wobbly but gained in strength during the evening, eventually playing Michael's selfish side well.

Another performance which really surprised me was Helen George as the society girl Diana.  Nicely introduced as what you expect to be a girl that Michael has picked up, the reveal that she is in fact Sir John's estranged wife is nicely done and she plays Diana's ruthless determination very well.  She more than holds her own against her more illustrious co-stars. Sadly the other supporting cast members are all a bit weak but the four leads carry them well.

Stephen Brimson Lewis has designed a pleasing Mayfair apartment for the primary action to take place which converts nicely into a low-rent Baron's Court flat for the final scene and it's a nice touch to have the time and place so well established with old Pathe News clips projected onto the wraparound scrim curtain.

Yes it's lightweight and throwaway, and not really Rattigan's best work, but it entertains and proves that sometimes experience does count for everything.  I was somewhat surprised to hear that it will transfer to the Apollo, Shaftesbury Avenue in May but wish it well as it is a play written to be seen on the Avenue.  I hope it finds it's audience.

"A pair so famous..."

Last week we returned to the Globe Theatre to see the second production in their Romans season ANTONY AND CLEOPATRA.  I had hoped when we booked the tickets for hopefully nice weather and sure enough the gods provided us with a warm evening with a much needed cool breeze sweeping around the auditorium from time to time.

I haven't seen too many productions to compare this one to - in 1986 I saw Vanessa Redgrave and Timothy Dalton make bricks from the straw of Toby Robinson's production and Helen Mirren needed a chiropractor after carrying the 1998 National Theatre production for the length of it's misguided run with no help from Alan Rickman's Eeyore-like Antony.

Jonathan Munby's is certainly the best production of the play I have seen, it had a fluidity and a pace that built up it's own momentum as our ageing lovers raced to their own destinies.  It had an unfussy design which did not distract from the text and I liked Colin Richmond's design choice of having the Egyptians in classical garb while the Romans wore sober Jacobean tunics.

Shakespeare's play has forty scenes - the most in all of his works - and with 34 speaking characters, one can be forgiven for wanting to press a pause button and say "hang on hang on... what happened to Sextus Pompey again?"

But for all it's politicking, this always takes second place to the ever-changing status of the title character's love-affair - they love, they bicker, they make up, they argue - and all the time they don't notice that the Empire they are ruling is vanishing beneath their feet until it is too late.

Any production depends on an equal balance of power between the two lovers, a good reason why the National Theatre was so woeful, but here Clive Wood and Eve Best were believable as both lovers and combatants.

Wood had just the right air of battered steel to make him believable as the ex-Roman general but also played the downfall of Antony with just the right world-weariness and self-disgust.  Eve Best... ah Eve Best.  I have seen her so often play the repressed wallflower - MOURNING BECOMES ELECTRA, THE CHERRY ORCHARD, THE HEIRESS - always there with a sniffle and a hankie up her jacket-sleeve so it was good to see her playing so against this type.

It was a fascinating performance - with one flaw.  Her Cleopatra was wonderfully mercurial, shifting like Egyptian sand: playful, demanding, insecure, aggressive, scornful and proud.  However after Antony's death, Cleopatra is truly alone and having to confront the cold-hearted Octavian who she knows wants to make her his prisoner and will not capitulate to her famous wiles.

Cleopatra knows there is only one escape and Shakespeare raises his game to match her coming demise.  He gives her wonderful speeches and in her final moments she proclaims her immortality to the ages, knowing that she is about to ascend into her own legend.  But Eve Best remained resolutely earthbound, muted to the end.  My immediate response was that this would be a fantastic performance in the Donmar or the Almeida but in this open-air venue which cries out for performances sent out into the void, it was a bit of a damp squib; it robbed Cleopatra of her glory.

The two leads were supported by a good supporting cast, most of them doubling up to fill the requirements of the play: Philip Correia as a boastful Sextus Pompey, a player about to get played by his fellow-Romans as well as a compassionate Dollabella; James Hayes as good as ever as Lepidus, another pawn in the game between Octavian and Antony, as well as the last-minute comic relief of the snake man and Peter Bankolé stood out as the hapless messenger who has to inform Cleopatra that Antony has married Octavian's sister and then as Eros, Antony's loyal aide.

Sirine Saba was a playful Charmian, Cleopatra's faithful servant, nicely playing the early scene when the Soothsayer informs her she will outlive her mistress, while Jolyon Coy was a chilly Octavian, always plotting Antony's downfall and proving himself Cleopatra's nemesis.  The best supporting performance however was Phil Daniels as Enobarbus.  With excellent diction and wonderful timing, he stole every scene he was in and deservedly earned a round when he exited after delivering the famous "The barge she sat in..." speech.

 

The production plays until August 24th and I highly recommend it.  I am now looking forward to seeing the Globe's JULIUS CAESAR in a month's time.

ps. If you can get seats in the front of the gallerys you also get a small amount of gold glitter to sprinkle over the rail at Antony and Cleopatra's wedding parade - I think I sprinkled with a grace that even Will would have approved of!