Peter Viney's Blog

A Woman of No Importance
by Oscar Wilde

Produced by Classic Spring Theatre Company

Directed by Dominic Dromgoole
Designed by Jonathan Fensom

Vaudeville Theatre, The Strand, London
Saturday 25th November 2017, 14.30

CAST
Eve Best – Mrs Arbuthnot
Anne Reid – Lady Hunstanton
Eleanor Bron – Lady Caroline Pontefract
Crystal Clarke – Hester Worsley, an American heiress
Emma Fielding – Mrs Allonby
Dominic Rowan – Lord Illingworth
Meg Coombs – Alice
Sam Cox – Sir John Pontefract
Phoebe Fildes – Lady Stutfield
William Gaunt – The Venerable Archdeacon Daubeny DD
Tim Gibson – Francis
Sioned Jones – ensemble
Will Kelly – Farquar, the butler
Harry Lister Smith- Gerald Arbuthnot
William Mannering – Lord Alfred Rufford
Paul Rider – Mr Kelvil, MP

“Children begin by loving their parents. After a time they judge them. Rarely, if ever, do they forgive them.”

“After a good dinner one can forgive anybody, even one’s own relations.”

“Nothing spoils romance so much as a sense of humor in the woman”

“The English country gentleman in pursuit of the fox … the unspeakable in full pursuit of the uneatable.”

There are so many more, the quotable lines fall over each other … even from the least popular of Wilde’s four comedies. The most famous one:

” All women become like their mothers. That is their tragedy. No man does. That is his.”

was recycled in The Importance of Being Earnest.

Eve Best as Mrs Arbuthnot

Dominic Dromgoole formed Classic Spring to explore plays designed for proscenium stages, in the theatres they were designed for. i.e. the cramped gilt and red plush West End theatres with dusty crimson curtains and inadequate loos which I so dislike. Except the Vaudeville has blue and gold curtains.  It’s a complete reversal of his years at Shakespeare’s Globe and Wanamaker Playhouse. The proscenium stage is back to the box full of detail with one wall removed. Dominic Dromgoole also decided to spend the first year exploring Oscar Wilde in detail. He points out that of the four Wilde comedies, three have only been performed once in London in the last twenty years.  On the other hand, Salomé, a lesser work to me than the comedies, has had two major productions this year … the RSC and The National Theatre. Revival is timely. These plays work, even if read aloud by amateurs.  With Classic Spring’s year of Wilde, we’re going to get them performed by the cream of the profession.

Dromgoole’s proscenium stage argument makes sense. I certainly can’t see the RSC or Globe doing Wilde, and recent productions, such as Chichester’s An Ideal Husband in 2014, Lady Windermere’s Fan with Vanessa Redgrave in 2002,  and the London 2003 production of this play with Samantha Bond have had lukewarm to poor reviews. With Wilde you are glued to a time frame and costume, and there’s little or nothing you could do with a thrust stage or in the round to enhance the basic text. I’ve seen The Importance stretched to the 1920s. The rest are tied to 1890-1914 tightly. However, these plays, while unappealing to a director keen to make a statement, should be played in front of audiences. Dromgoole has made his statements many times. I’m pleased that he’s willing just to present a play done in a way the writer would have enjoyed. The major critics all seem somewhat sniffy about Wilde. Perhaps it’s just too Downton Abbey for them, or rather the way Downton purloins characters from Wilde is a problem. I just say:

When one is tired of Wilde, one is tired of living.

Alright, sorry, but everyone else tried to get a Wilde style line into their reviews!

A Woman of No Importance from 1893 starts the season. Of the four comedies, it was generally considered the weakest. Some reviewers cite a dauntingly “large” cast of sixteen, but if they care to check Lady Windermere’s Fan also lists sixteen in the original, An Ideal Husband lists fifteen, and this is also fifteen in the original: they added Tilley the maid in this one. I suspect the critics were thinking of The Importance with a cast of nine.

A great deal of time in the first half  is spent in exchanging those never-ending epigrams in a drawing room, before it breaks into melodrama.  That race for epigrams was nailed for ever by Graham Chapman (as Wilde) and John Cleese (as Whistler) in a sketch by Monty Python’s Flying Circus. So it’s a challenge, and one met by drawing on a stellar ensemble. Dominic Dromgoole is drawing on a pool of actors he worked with at The Globe, most notably Dominic Rowan, the Vincentio  in Dromgoole’s fine Measure For Measure and Eve Best, from Antony & Cleopatra. We discussed the casting on the way home, hoping the rest of the Wilde season will see the return of other Globe stalwarts. Some one called the Dromgoole regulars “the disappeared” under Emma Rice’s subsequent Globe regime.

The programme is excellent, with an evocative introduction by Dominic Dromgoole on Wilde living nearly opposite the Vaudeville Theatre and seeing Hedda Gabler there. They also explored Wilde’s drafts of the play and restored some of the harder-hitting lines which had been smoothed out in the final text. What they are I don’t know, I only have the standard Penguin Plays edition.  A glance after the performance indicates that they cut several lines too. The  programme essay on the advent of the proscenium stage is fascinating. Wilde did want to take the wall off a room and present low key social chattering in contrast to declamatory theatre. He also wanted detailed sets and he certainly gets them in this production.

There are three beautifully realized  sets: The terrace of Hunstanton Chase for Act 1 and 3, then the drawing room for Act 2 and then we have Mrs Arbuthnot’s more modest prettier living room for Act 4. It’s a small stage too, pressing the actors almost into the 4:3 of television screens, as if a deliberate ploy to get Wilde’s required intimacy … I noticed they had two internal frames or inner proscenium stage, tightening it further.

Television screens are relevant, because if you go to see the broadcast to cinema version, our afternoon is what you will see. They had five cameras downstairs and one wide shot from the circle. Given recording, they really should have done the mobile phones warning, because they got two lots and a bad cougher. Do you process them out or leave them for an edge of authenticity? Because of the cameras they had lost a lot of seats behind the set of three large cameras in the middle, so the applause is not a full theatre. I would have stood to applaud, but was aware that I couldn’t because of cameras behind.

Anne Reid as Lady Hunstanton

Eleanor Bron as Lady Caroline Pontefract

The play starts at Lady Hunstanton’s house  (Anne Reid) with all that quotable clever gossip. Hester Worsely (Crystal Clarke) is a puritanical American visitor, and Gerald Arbuthnot (Harry Lister Smith)  is about to become secretary to the charismatic Lord Illingworth (Dominic Rowan) who is due to become Ambassador to Vienna. Hester and Gerald go off for a walk, allowing everyone to comment about them. Lord Illingworth, perpetually on the pull, is chatting up the flirtatious Mrs Allonby (Emma Fielding).

Mrs Allonby (Emma Fielding) and Lord Illingworth (Dominic Rowan)

Lady Hunstanton decides to invite Gerald’s mother to the house party and sends off an invitation. The reply with acceptance arrives. When they meet, Lord Illingworth is horrified. Mrs Allonby asks who this Mrs Arbuthnot is, and we get the punch line, ‘A woman if no importance.’ Ah, but that’s not true.  Illingworth was Mrs Arbuthnot’s lover twenty years earlier, and he is the father of her illegitimate child, and it’s revealed to him that Gerald is that child. Then the fun commences, and the play takes off.

There are three songs in front of the curtain to cover the scene changes, and I’m amazed even so that they managed such major changes in the time. Anne Reid sings all three, accompanied by the the butler (Will Kelly) and footman (Tim Gibson) on guitars, Lady Stutfield (Phoebe Fildes) on violin, and Tilly the maid (Sioned Jones) on clarinet. What was so good is that all five stayed in character through the songs, and especially Tilly the maid who acted very nervous and put in some deliberate bum clarinet notes. The songs were sentimental music hall: A Boy’s Best Friend is His Mother, Father’s A Drunkard and Mother is Dead and The Gypsy’s Warning. Anne Reid acted out the sentimentality and the clear lyrics drew a lot of laughs. Criticized elsewhere, I can’t see why. Charming and funny and apposite. Anne Reid’s warm portrait of Lady Hunstanton is the centre around which the whole play revolves.

Anne Reid covers the changes of scenery with Music Hall songs.

Act one is the over-rich feast of witty lines, but when you have Anne Reid (as hostess Lady Hunstanton) and Eleanor Bron (Lady Caroline Pontefract) delivering them, they cannot fail to work. The running joke is Lady Caroline’s husband, Sir John (Sam Cox) is constantly being pestered by her to put on a muffler or overshoes. The other running joke is his increasing fury as she persists in addressing the MP Mr Kelvil (Paul Rider) , as Mr Kettle. They’re a brilliant casting pairing. Then Mr Kelvil combines sanctimonious drivel with groping and lechery, proving that here at least nothing has improved with MPs between 1893 and 2017.

Mr Kelvin MP (Paul Rider) and Lady Stutfield (Phoebe Fildes)

Act One focuses on the society women. Lady Stutfield is nice but dim. Mrs Alllonby (Emma Fielding) is a Wilde favourite female … witty, sharp, flirtatious, sexy and far too clever. Lord Alfred is a tiny part but William Mannering makes the most of his two cameo appearances as a drunken, scruffy chain-smoking prat, lurching about. We meet Hester Worseley (Crystal Clarke) the 18 year old American orphaned heiress who is puritanical and critical. Wilde was having fun with names here … Hester was the adulteress with the scarlet A, in The Scarlet Letter by Nathanial Hawthorne, so her exact opposite. Mrs Arbuthnot is also “Mrs Capital A.” I don’t suppose anyone was supposed to notice that, authors often do it, but Hawthorne was at the peak of his popularity in the late 19th century.

We meet Lord Illingworth, about to take young Gerald under his wing as his secretary. Afterwards we discussed the not quite invisible mending on Gerald’s trousers. Was it an on stage accident requiring repair, or was it a mark of his comparative poverty? We decided the latter.

Act 2: The drawing room: L to R:  Hester Worsely, Lady Hunstanton, Mrs Arbuthnot (behind(, Lady Caroline, Lady Stutfield, Mrs Allonby

Act two is the women in the drawing room, while the men do the cigars, port and dirty jokes in another room. As I had always feared, they are dissing men in particular and in general. I have only experienced that after dinner gender division twice in my life, so marked was the generational shift. In both cases my older hosts seemed to be reliving days gone by.

Hester (Crystal Clarke) tells them what’s wrong with English society.

Hester is hidden by a chair for much of the conversation, and they have forgotten she is there. She gets up and rails at society, Britain, hypocrisy, loose morals. The important plot point is the arrival of Mrs Arbuthnot (Eve Best). As we later discover, she has overheard much of this. The drama kicks in to take it to the interval, when Mrs Arbuthnot realizes that the Charles Harford who deserted her when she was pregnant twenty years earlier is now Lord Illingworth. It was no fling either. They travelled together as man and wife for a year.

Act 3: Lord Illingworth (Dominic Rowan) and Gerald (Harry Lister Smith). Both had candelabra when we saw it

Lighting throughout is excellent, but note Act Three’s twilight / evening garden scene especially.  We had to smile at the start of Act Three where Lord Illingworth (Dominic Rowan) is on the terrace with Gerald (Harry Lister Smith) at night. Both hold small candelabra which partly light their faces. It was Dominic Dromgoole who was responsible for the candlelit Wanamaker Playhouse at Shakespeare’s Globe. Either it was a little nod to that, or maybe he’d simply discovered at the Wanamaker that it was effective.  I don’t think they needed them, nor the hurricane lamps placed in the footlights, but they do give a warm glow.

Act 3: L to R: Lady Hunstanton, Mrs Allonby, The Archdeacon, Gerald

Another fine cameo in Act 3 is William Gaunt’s Archdeacon. The lines about his wife with dementia are touching and a surprise to know that Wilde wrote this so accurately and movingly in 1893.

The Truth will out: Mrs Arbuthnot reveals all to Gerald

Act four takes us to Mrs Arbuthnot’s house and the final melodramatic scenes.  Every interaction between Eve Best’s Mrs Arbuthnot, and Dominic Rowan’s Lord Illingworth is electric in body language. In spite of everything they always end up standing extremely close to each other at “intimate zone” distance, as if hatred may be her main emotion, but the magnetism is still active at a different level. She resists Illingworth’s attempt to take over the son he has not seen for twenty years, and slaps him round the face with a glove (an action he earlier described to Mrs Allonby as a turn-on, though not in those words). The play ends with Eve Best beautifully weighting the last line to dismiss Lord Illingworth as “A Man of No Importance.” Playing on the title in the last line was what Wilde revived for The Importance of Being Earnest.

I guess in the end it’s four stars, because the witty bits are too well-known and the melodramatic bits are somewhat dated. However, yet again the star fewer than five is the text, not the acting, direction or production.

Going back to the paucity of Wilde productions in London in the last twenty years, it seemed to us that the natural milieu for a Wilde revival is a long provincial tour, though I can’t see such famous and highly accomplished actors being keen on a few months trailing round the country. This would have been hugely popular at Bath Theatre Royal or Salisbury Playhouse. Reading the London critics again,they have so many possibilities that a meticulously constructed play, directed with such marvelous attention to detail, fails to tickle jaded palettes. Out in the sticks, we would love it, and we did on our trip to the big city.

****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID
4
Paul Taylor, The Independent ****
Dominic Maxwell, The Times, ****
Quentin Letts, Daily Mail ****
Michael Arditti, Sunday Express ****
Natasha Tripney, The Stage ****

But every time Best is on stage the whole production lights up like a gas lamp. Mrs Arbuthnot is not one of Wilde’s coolest characters. She does not speak in quips and witticisms. But she is a woman of strength. She’s had to be.

Maranka Swain, Broadway World ****
3
Michael Billington, The Guardian ***

It begins with a play that is neither Wilde’s first nor one of his best. The one big surprise about Dominic Dromgoole’s production, starring Eve Best and Anne Reid, is that it perks up no end the more the play dwindles into absurdity.

Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph, ***

To revive one Wilde social comedy may be considered a safe choice. To revive four looks like a grand temerity.
(a wonderful opening line for a review)

Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard ***

(The) between-acts songs are hard work. As Wilde himself might have put it, one would have delighted us abundantly, three is over-generous.

Ian Shuttleworth, Financial Times, ***

An immense amount of thought, care and skill has gone into every aspect of the production, and the result is a thing of beauty but not of profundity.

Andrez Lukowski, Time Out ***
Tony Peters, Radio Times ***
Mark Shenton, London Theatre, ***
Sarah Crompton, What’s On Stage ***

LINKS TO REVIEWS ON THIS BLOG:

OSCAR WILDE
Salomé, by Oscar Wilde, RSC, Stratford, 2017
Importance of Being Earnest 2010 by Oscar Wilde, Rain or Shine Company
Importance of Being Earnest 2014 by Oscar Wilde, West End & Tour, directed by Lucy Bailey
Importance of Being Earnest, 2015 by Oscar Wilde with David Suchet as Lady Bracknell
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde, Chichester Festival Theatre
An Ideal Husband, Classic Spring 2018
Lady Windermere’s Fan, Classic Spring 2018

DOMINIC DROMGOOLE
The Tempest, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, 2016
Measure for Measure, Globe 2015
Romeo & Juliet – Globe
The Changeling – Sam Wanamaker Playhouse
Julius Caesar – Globe
Hamlet – Globe
Duchess of Malfi– Sam Wanamaker
A Midsummer Night’s Dream – Globe 2013
Pericles, Wanamaker Playhouse, 2015

EVE BEST
Antony & Cleopatra, Globe, 2014
The Duchess of Malfi, Old Vic, 2012

ANNE REID
Fracked! by Alistair Beaton, Chichester 2016

DOMINIC ROWAN
The Tempest, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, 2016
Measure for Measure, Globe (Vincentio)
Ah! Wilderness, Young Vic 2015
Medea, NT Live

PAUL RIDER
The Tempest, Sam Wanamaker Playhouse, 2016
Measure for Measure, Globe
Julius Caesar, Globe
Knight of The Burning Pestle, Globe.
The Duchess of Malfi, Wanamaker

SAM COX
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Young Vic, 2017
Macbeth, Globe 2016  – Duncan
The Winter’s Tale, Wanamaker 2016
Pericles, Wanamaker, 2015
Julius Caesar, Globe 2014

WILLIAM GAUNT
Strife by John Galsworthy, Chichester 2016
Richard II, The Globe  (John of Gaunt)
The Crucible, Old Vic 2014 (Giles Corey)