Peter Viney's Blog

The Country Wife
By William Wycherley

Directed by Jonathan Munby
Designed by Soutra Gilmour
Music by Grant Olding

Minerva Theatre, Chichester
Thursday 28^thJune 2018, 14.45

CAST:

Susannah Fielding – Margery Pinchwife
Lex Shrapnel – Horner
Michael Elwyn – Sir Jasper Fidget
Jo Herbert – Alithea, Pinchwife’s sister
John Hodgkinson – Pinchwife
Scott Karim – Sparkish
Tom Kanji – A quack
Belinda Lang – Lady Fidget,
Harry Lawtey – Dorliant
Natasha Magigi – Mrs Squeamish
Charlotte Mills – Lucy, Alithea’s maid
Jack North – A boy
Robin Weaver – Dainty Fidget,  sister to Sir Jasper
Ashley Zhangazha – Harcourt

Chichester can assemble as good a cast as anywhere in London or Stratford. Look at the “Links to Other Reviews On This Blog” as an indication of how often we have seen these actors, and in such first rate productions. Lex Shrapnel in the male lead role, Horner, doesn’t get a recent link, but he was Romeo to Emily Blunt’s Juliet at Chichester in 2002.

The Country Wife dates from 1675. Wycherly based the character of Horner, the rake, partly on himself, partly on the Earl of Rochester. Both of them shared mistresses with King Charles II, and that included Nell Gwynn, which is why there are (now) perplexing jokes about oranges in the play. Wycherly sat out Cromwell’s Commonwealth era (1647-1660) in France, along with Charles II, and bits of three Moliere plays were utilised. The Country Wife has been called (well, in cover blurb) “The greatest English farce.”

Horner at the start of the play

The story starts with Horner (Lex Shrapnel), and a Quack doctor (Tom Kanji). Horner has been in France, and has decided that as no husbands in London trust him with their wives, he will feign impotence. He claims to have been treated for the pox (syphilis) in France and that a clumsy doctor(or even surgeon) has left him impotent. As the programme notes, mercury treatment could cause horrific sores and for your nose to fall off, so by extension they can believe he has become a eunuch. Mercury! Mercury! chuckles Sir Jasper Fidget when told. This should give him access to be alone with married women – which in those days of no contraception were the safest bet for the rake.

Susannah Fielding as Marjory Pinchwife watching TV

Then there’s the story of Mr Pinchwife (John Hodgkinson). As an ex-whorer of note, as a result he trusts no one and has kept his wife hidden in the country so as to preserve her bucolic innocence. He has had to bring her up to town, and claims to Horner & Co that she’s plain. He takes her to a play … jokes about plays and players feature a great deal … but sits in the cheap seats to avoid the aristocratic likes of Horner and his pals, Harcourt and Dorliant. However, Horner sees her. Pinchwife foolishly tells his wife that she has an admirer and she gets interested and excited. He dresses her up as a schoolboy to hide her from them. I’m not sure whether Horner sees through the disguise or finds schoolboys equally attractive.

L to R: Horner (Lex Shrapnel), Pinchwife (John Hodgkinson), Dorliant (Harry Lawtey)

Meanwhile, the fop Sparkish (Scott Karim) proves a figure of fun to the lads (Horner & Co). He is set to marry Pinchwife’s sister Alithea (Jo Herbert). Harcourt determines to steal her away from him.

Belinda Lang (Lady Fidget) gets it on with Horner (Lex Shrapnel)

Then Horner is pursued by three women … Lady Fidget (a wonderful advanced RP character by Belinda Lang), her sister in law Dainty (Robin Weaver) and Mrs Squeamish (Natasha Magigi). The casting here has them as three radically different-looking women in stature, age, ethnicity,  hair colour.

The three plots interweave, with Susannah Fielding’s Country Wife at the centre, totally innocently falling in love with Horner and disguising herself as Alithea to escape to Horner. That was easier in the days of universal wigs, and they transpose that to modern times so she can appear in Alithea’s black and white Cruella da Ville wig.

Her husband’s locked her in her room. As does Horner. At the end, when everyone else has worked out the ploy of Horner’s feigned impotence, they do a Cuckold’s dance. Mrs Pinchwife is the only one who didn’t understand what had happened and wanders to the back alone, not part of the dance (just as Susannah Fielding did as Portia in The Merchant of Venice incidentally).

Mrs Pinchwife is thrilled at the thought she has an admirer. Mr Pinchwife (John Hodgkinson) has realised he was daft to tell her.

Modern dress is spreading its way from virtually the default for Elizabethan and Jacobean drama to the Restoration period. The design is powerful, and by Soutra Gilmour who again favours blacks and modern dress, albeit often hyper-real modern dress. This time the whole set is black, floors, furniture and all. Horner’s flat has three matt black doors. When the set revolves to Pinchwife’s house, the doors are moulded glossy black. Everyone is dressed in blacks and whites: checks, stripes, floral, plain, but only black, white and grey. That is except for “The Country Wife” herself. Mrs Pinchwife (Susannah Fielding) stands out in bright yellow – first a dress, then a loungewear tracksuit, then pyjama bottoms. Even when she is dressed up as a schoolboy, Jennings or possibly Jimmy Cranky, the school uniform colour is yellow.

The production values are high. There’s dance, loud rock music, dynamic lighting. The second half opens with a song – it is rare to get just the one – by Jack North as “the boy” or Horner’s servant. The others dance.  Servants are important … Charlotte Mills as Lucy, Alithea’s servant links the plot together.

The lighting plot is intricate too, and I admired it. In plays of this era, the hardest thing to deal with is when a character goes into THINKS! inner monologue, or when an actor confides to the audience. Here they did it with an instant spot (or even facial pin-spot) on the speaker whilst everyone else froze. Perfectly executed. I’ve had to hit single faces on a large stage with a pin spot with 1960s limelights, and it is precision work for actor and light operator. No doubt now you can do it with a mouse on a video screen!

The downside for me is that the dialogue is fast, and not all the jokes survive time. The most famous bit when Lady Fidget claims she was closeted with Horner in his bedroom “looking at china” worked a dream, aided by the phallic white vase she is holding. I don’t know whether this is the first comic confusion over “going in the back way”. Sir Jasper Fidget (Michael Elwyn) is talking about Horner finding another route into a locked room. Horner and Lady Fidget interpret it differently.

The first half has too little of Susannah Fielding’s wide-eyed Mummerset Mrs Pinchwife, and the second half, when she comes to the fore is far funnier. Being forced to compose a “go away” letter to Horner, then changing it to a “come here” letter is the best part of the play … well, given Susannah Fielding and John Hodgkinson performing it, how could it not be marvellous? I would say they should have given Mr Pinchwife a bigger one … sorry, double entendre, like the pox, is highly infectious. I mean a bigger knife. It’s not the first time that a modern dress version of a play has had to deal with a character having a long dagger or sword, and resolved it by giving him a tiny penknife. There has to be a better way round the problem … his threat to carve WHORE on her forehead is weakened by the miniscule implement in his hand.

Harcourt (Ashley Zhangazha) and Sparkish (Scott Karim)

After Susannah Fielding, the other star comic role is Scott Karim’s fop, Sparkish. It is intrinsically the part to play large, and he’s great. I’ve seen Scott Karim before in totally different roles, and this was a surprise. We loved his interpretation, and both he and Susannah Fielding lit up the stage so much with their presence, that other scenes often felt too wordy, waiting for them to appear and enliven them.

They manage to avoid the “duel with tiny penknives” issue with Sparkish and Harcourt. Fabulous stuff. They go into battle with an electric blender, and Alithea stops the fight by pulling out the plug. The kitchen setting is also used when Mr Pinchwife, who has been brained with a frying pan, opens the black SMEG fridge/ freezer and soothes his brow with a pack of frozen peas.

The programme has much to say on the sexual morality of 1675. It points out the number of times that Horner seems a reluctant wooer and screwer, seeing intercourse as a chore, but compelled to seek ever more conquests, thus a sad figure. Lex Shrapnel succeeds in bringing out both dimensions. I can see the character … his true aim, I believe, is to impress his male pals. It’s a status thing. In the early 70s, I can think of two ELT teachers in the school I worked in who used to keep competitive scoresheets. At that time we were teaching mainly 20s to 30s age group, and there were more women than men in the classes … mainly Swiss, German and French. I lampooned the situation in the Dart Travis novel Foreign Affairs.  

I think the programme is right on the standards of 1675, and I think you can bring them up to the present. The two guys I’m thinking of lived for playing rugby at weekends, and I suspect they got more pleasure in boasting about their conquests while naked in a bath with their male pals than they did in the original encounters. Horner is alive and (un)well.

My feeling of unease about matinees was increased. It’s a Chichester matinee. The audience are “retired” to the extent that in the five minutes before the start, I started looking around for “younger people.” Two?  No more. Who else is free on a Thursday afternoon? After the interval, I noticed empty seats because there were three of them in our row. So I counted waiting for the start. Only one empty seat at the start of the play, TWENTY-ONE after the interval. I was amazed. Pshaw! (as everyone in the play says), A pox on them!

That’s a big interval exit rate. The production is urban and edgy. It reminded me of older audiences reactions to Emma Rice’s regime  at The Globe in 2016 and 2017. Modern dress, dynamic lighting, dance, loud music – I loved Horner appearing to operate a vinyl deck with LP on stage. There will be some who want the crinolines, satin dresses and elaborate wigs. I heard two ladies complaining in the ice cream queue that the first half was “too long.” It wasn’t that long … around 75 minutes, but they perceived it as “long.”

I have a strong feeling that like recent Minerva productions (This House, Quiz, Fracked …) it will make its way to the West End for a longer run. The cast is as good as you can get in every role and Chichester’s track record in creating important productions that can move on is a possible attraction in accepting the jobs. I reckon that it will be better received with evening audiences at Chichester, and much better received if it gets to London. It’s somewhat ironic as the small Sussex cathedral city of Chichester may end up as “The Country Wife” to a London production. It echoes what I’ve said about Classic Spring’s Oscar Wilde 2018 season in London. These plays would be way better received in Bath or Chichester than London. The Country Wife is the reverse.

****

WHAT THE CRITICS SAID

4 star
Domenic Cavendish, Telegraph ****
David Jays, Sunday Times ****
3 star
Michael Billington, Guardian ***
Rosemary Waugh, The Stage ***
Anne Cox, Stage Review ***
Maxwell Cooter, What’ds On Stage ***
2 star
Anne Treneman, The Times **

LINKS ON THIS BLOG

JONATHAN MUNBY
King Lear, with Ian McKellen, Chichester 2017
First Light, by Mark Hayhurst, Chichester 2016
The Merchant of Venice, Globe, 2015
Twelfth Night, English Touring Theatre, Brighton 2015
Therese Raquin, by Zola, Bath Theatre Royal 2014
Antony & Cleopatra, Globe 2014

SUSANNAH FIELDING
The Merchant of Venice, Almeida 2015 (Portia)
The Beaux Stratagem, by George Farquhar, National Theatre 2015 (Mrs Sullen)
A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Grandage Season, 2013 (Hermia)
The School For Scandal, by Sheridan, Bath Theatre Royal 2012 (Lady Teazel)
All New People by Zach Braff, London 2012 (Kim)

JOHN HODGKINSON
Twelfth Night, RSC 2017 (Sir Toby Belch)
Love’s Labour’s Lost– RSC 2014 (Don Armado)
Love’s Labour’s Won RSC 2014 (Don Pedro)
Hangmen, by Martin McDonagh, 2015 (Pierrepointe)
Love’s Labour’s Lost, RSC / Chichester 2016 (Don Armado)
Much Ado About Nothing, RSC / Chichester 2016 (Don Pedro)
The Ferryman, by Jez Butterworth, Royal Court, 2017 (Tom Kettle)

JO HERBERT
For Services Rendered, by Somerset Maugham, Chichester 2015 (Ethel)
Candida, by Shaw, Bath 2013
The Game of Love & Chance by Marivaux, Salisbury 2011 (Lisette)

CHARLOTTE MILLS
Two Gentlemen of Verona, Wanamaker Playhouse 2016
Therese Raquin, by Zola, Bath Theatre Royal 2014
The Winter’s Tale, RSC 2013,
Jerusalem by Jez Butterworth, London 2011 (Tanya)

SCOTT KARIM
The Country Wife, Chichester 2018
Young Marx by Richard Bean & Clive Coleman, Bridge Theatre 2017
Imogen (Cymbeline Renamed), Globe 2016
The Merchant of Venice, Globe 2015
Othello, National Theatre, 2013

ASHLEY ZHANGAZHA
Fences by August Wilson, Bath 2013 (Cory)
Henry V, Grandage Season, 2013 (chorus / boy)
Ah, Wilderness! by Eugene O’Neill, Young Vic 2015 (Arthur)

MICHAEL ELWYN
Much Ado About Nothing, Old Vic 2013 (Leonato)

NATASHA MAGIGI
Lady Windermere’s Fan, Classic Spring 2018 (Lady Plymdale)
Comus, by Milton, Wanamaker Playhouse, 2016