Peter Viney's Blog

An Ideal Husband
By Oscar Wilde 

Classic Spring production

Directed by Jonathan Church
Designed by Simon Higlett
Lighting by Howard Harrison

 Vaudeville Theatre, London, Friday 25^thMay 2018, 19.30

CAST
Edward Fox – Earl of Caversham
Freddie Fox  – Viscount Goring, son of The Earl of Caversham
Frances Barber – Mrs Cheveley
Sally Bretton – Lady Chiltern
Nathaniel Parker- Lord Chiltern -Under-Secretary of State
Susan Hampshire- Lady Markby
Faith Omole – Mabel Chiltern, Sir Robert’s sister

Samuel Martin – Violinist, Harold Sir Robert’s footman
Joanna van Kampen – Mrs Marchmont
Rebecca Charles – Countess of Basildon
Tameka Mortimer – The Duchess of Marlborough
Sam Archer- Mason, Sir Robert’s butler
Michael Peters – Mr Montford
Sam Parks – Vicomte de Nanjac
Tim Wallers – Phipps, Viscount Goring’s servant
Sam Barrett – James , Viscount Goring’s footman

Note: The WordPress spellchecker is convinced that Mrs Cheveley is in fact Mrs Chevrolet and insists on changing it every time.I hope I have caught them all.

Freddie Fox as Lord Goring; Edward Fox as the Earl of Caversham

It’s often considered to be Wilde’s best play, because the subject matter is meatier, but I think it’s over-familiarity with The Importance of Being Earnest (my definition of a perfectly constructed play) that leads people to say that. The critics are rating this as the best of the Classic Spring Season so far.  I’m not so sure … I liked the lightness of Lady Windermere’s Fan very much, and I’d say we enjoyed it more (as people who like Wilde). The plays have strong plot device similarities (a woman hidden in a bachelor’s rooms leading to misunderstandings). The serious political scandal message in An Ideal Husband boosts its Metropolitan rating, I suspect.

The thing about this production was casting real life father and son, Edward Fox and Freddie Fox, as the Earl of Caversham and his son, Lord Goring. Edward Fox is not new to the role of the Earl of Caversham … he played it at Chichester in 2014.

I kept comparing it to the recent Chichester production. Jonathan Church, who directed this, was Artistic Director at Chichester when they did it, so heavily involved in both. The idea of using the Vaudeville Theatre for Classic Spring’s Wilde season, was to present Wilde as it was written on a proscenium stage with us looking into the room through the fourth wall. Chichester’s thrust stage caused some blocking issues, mentioned in my review where you had to watch a few backs in speeches but it also gave it more fluidity and pace.

A large cast for Act One 

The play is intrinsically unbalanced. Act One requires a large cast of London society, who then disappear never to be seen again. This is the party scene that reads like a send-up of Wilde with the epigrams falling over each other in rapid succession. OK, they’re airheads in modern terms. The between acts scene-changing device throughout is solo violin (with a backing track of violins), and Ithought the violins ran too long and too repetitively under the Act One interchanges. We learn that Sir Robert Chiltern (Nathaniel Parker) is a rising political star. His best friend is Viscount Goring (Freddie Fox) who is a man about town, fop, and many people regard as a languid and witty Wilde alter-ego… though as the man with the guilty secret to hide from his loyal and perfect wife(Sally Bretton) the Wilde identification is also with Sir Robert Chiltern.

Lady Chiltern (Sally Bretton) & Sir Robert Chiltern (Nathaniel Parker)

The Earl of Caversham (Edward Fox) is a lordly member of the government, and Goring’s old fashioned father. A Wilde stock character, the dowager, in this case Lady Markby (Susan Hampshire) turns up with another stock character, the shady lady with a past, Mrs Cheveley (Frances Barber). These elderly ladies seemed to specialise in inadvertently bringing dubious women into upstanding homes.

Mrs Cheveley (Frances Barber) and Sir Robert Chiltern (Nathaniel Parker)

Mrs Cheveley was dubiously connected to the dubious Baron Arnhem, and when he was 22, Sir Robert did a touch of dubious insider trading as a young politico and let the bad Baron know about the Parliamentary appproval for the Suez Canal, two days early. The baron made £750,000 and dropped £100,000 on Sir Robert, forming the basis for his fortune and career. Mrs Cheveley will reveal all, unless Sir Robert agrees to speak in parliament in favour of a dodgy Argentine canal scheme.

Lord Goring tries to ignore his father, the Earl of Caversham

The play drops badly in its dull, wordy Act Two. Half the cast have departed for good. I thought the same last time I saw it, it’s Wilde’s fault, and they haven’t found a way round it in this production. Drastic cutting would be my solution. Too much moralising, too much explanation. OK, we know Sir Robert is in it up to his neck. We also find that Lady Chiltern and Mrs Cheveley knew and loathed each other at school, and they have a row and all is revealed. At the interval, we both confessed to finding Act 2 heavy-going and boring. Though Sally Bretton was a brilliant upright, principled, innocent wife … always a difficult role with humour in everyone else’s lines, but not yours.

Freddie Fox in Act 3

Fortunately it changes gear in Act 3. Freddy Fox shows right away with his antics in a mirror (the audience are the other side) that he’s going to steal the show in the character of Lord Goring. He adds a great deal of physical comedy, aiming kicks at his departing father’s backside and so on. We are in his rooms. He receives a letter from Lady Chiltern saying she’s coming to see him. His father turns up, and there’s a classic interchange, done superbly.

Lord Goring tries to hasten his father’s departure

Of course Mrs Cheveley turns up, unknown to him, and is stuck in the drawing room behind the curtains by the valet. Then Sir Robert arrives. Lord Goring thinks the hidden woman is Lady Chiltern, cue misunderstandings. The parallel scene in Lady Windermere’s Fan has the advantage of more observers in the room to lift the comedy, though here it gave Freddie Fox and Nathaniel Parker full scope for a great double act. The plot between Mrs Cheveley (whom the brand name afflicted spellchecker now believes is Mars Chevrolet) and Goring thickens, twists, turns, bounces in different directions.

Act 4: Freddie Fox as Lord Goring, Faith Omole as Mabel Chiltern

Act 4 takes us back to the Chiltern abode the next morning, where all is resolved and we get the romance between Mabel (Faith Omole) and Goring. I thought Sir Robert’s reactions when first Goring saves the day, then asks to marry his sister, the funniest part of the Act, though Edward Fox’s final parts were extremely funny.

The issue of a whole season of Wilde is that he seems to peel the characters off a sheet of stock roles. Casting accentuates this, the small but vital part of the essential dowager (Lady Markby here) inevitably goes to a very famous somewhat older actress. Faith Omole was a perfect Cecilia, or here Mabel, by which I mean sparkling young female object of attention. However, as she is Sir Robert’s sister, we were asked to be ethnicity-blind rather than balanced. In A Woman of No Importance, they had ethnic balance (The Afro-Caribbean actor was an American heiress) but here we are blind, because she is a sister. Unusually, she was so good that I accepted that she really was.

We kept comparing the 2014 production, and felt that the Chichester version was more rounded, brought out the angst in Sir Robert’s situation more and played some of those epigram exchanges more fluently. Lord Goring was played less obviously for laughs too, which may serve the play better. I gave that 4 stars, so this will have to be 3.

In the end, I think the big mistake was showing Lady Windemere’s Fan and The Ideal Husband in such close proximity. They’re too similar in construction, with a frothier funnier one followed by a more serious message-conscious one, but with very similar characters and even plot. I would have put one first in the season and the other fourth. You couldn’t fault any of the characters, excellent set, excellent costumes. While I like Act 1 and Act 4, and think Act 3 among Wilde’s greatest writing, performed so well here, Act 2 is dull. It may be much better if you haven’t seen it before or read it, so the plot twists come as a surprise. You can’t “unsee” previous knowledge though.

Three stars ***

An Ideal Husband will move to Bath Theatre Royal after its London run.
Live broadcast to cinemas: 5th June 2018

4 stars
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph ****
Michael Billington, Guardian ****
Paul Taylor, The Independent ****
Ann Treneman, The Times ****
Fiona Mountford, Evening Standard ****
Marianka Swain, Broadway World ****
Mark Shenton, London Theatre Co ****
Alun Hood, What’s On Stage ****

3 stars
Caroline McGinn, Time Out ***
Neil Norman, The Express ***

2 stars
Natasha Tripney, The Stage **

LINKS ON THIS BLOG:

OSCAR WILDE PLAYS
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde, Chichester Festival Theatre, 2014
A Woman of No Importance, by Oscar Wilde, Classic Spring, 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
Lady Windermere’s Fan, by Oscar Wilde, Classic Spring, 2018
Salomé, by Oscar Wilde, RSC, Stratford, 2017

JONATHAN CHURCH
Racing Demon, by David Hare, Bath 2017
Hobson’s Choice, by Harold Brighouse, Bath 2016
Mack & Mabel, Chichester Festival Theatre, 2015
Amadeus, Chichester Festival Theatre, 2014

EDWARD FOX
An Ideal Husband by Oscar Wilde, Chichester Festival Theatre, 2014

FREDDIE FOX
Travesties by Tom Stoppard, Menier 2016