The Importance of Being Earnest
by Oscar Wilde
The Watermill Theatre
Bagnor, near Newbury
Saturday 8th June 2019, 14.30 matinee
The Watermill Theatre. I always take a new picture for Watermill reviews. One review called it “hard to get to”. It’s certainly not. It’s very close to the A34 / M4 junction even if it feels deep in the heart of the country. There are many large towns within a 60-90 minute drive. We made it from Poole in about 75 minutes.
Directed by Kate Budgen
Designed by Amy Jane Cook
CAST
Charlotte Beaumont- Cecily Cardew
Peter Bray – Algernon Moncrieff
Jim Creighton – Dr Chasuble
Claudia Jolly – Gwendolen
Wendy Nottingham – Miss Prism
Morgan Philpot- Lane / Merriman
Benedict Salter- Jack Worthing
Connie Walker – Lady Bracknell
The pre-show! I always love a pre-show. The stage is littered with party detritus when we take our seats, including bottles, streamers, overflowing ashtrays and a large modern traffic cone. The butler, Lane, clears it all up. When the play starts, Lane takes out a remote control, points it and changes the lights and music.
Anachronistic props are a key to the production. The cast are in sumptuous late Victorian costumes, but all the stage props are modern. Paper cups, foil trays, funny cartoon watering cans, folding plastic chairs, Astroturf.
L to R: Algernon (Peter Bray), Cecily (Charlotte Beaumont), Jack (Benedict Salter), Gwendolen (Claudia Jolly)
At this point the online photos didn’t have close-up photos of Algernon, Miss Prism or Canon Chasuble
They”ve walled over the fabric of the Watermill with beige chipboard to create an even tighter, more confined stage with several near invisible doors or hatches. The minimalist set was one large William Morris print at the back. OK, but I might have had a crimson print for London and a green print for the country. Looking at the stills, they adjusted the colours with lighting. We were right at the front and it wasn’t that obvious that they were.
So you have two butlers in the cast list. Lane is Algernon’s butler in London, Merriman is Jack Worthing’s butler in the country. The loads-a-money West End productions favour two actors (plus non-speaking gardeners and housemaids for Classic Spring last year), but as they never appear together, it’s logical to combine both parts with one actor as here with Morgan Philpott. Then the choice becomes how to differentiate them. One is to make Lane smart and snooty, and Merriman elderly, addled and put upon. I’m very used to Lane / Merriman as THE major part because when we did this play twice or three times a year for ELT / ESL students, this was how my boss played both butlers, though he played both elderly. Minimal differentiation … they’re just “the butlers.” and in my boss’s case, maximum scene stealing hobbling across the stage with trays held in violently trembling hands. When he retired I played both parts myself (snooty RP for Lane, stroppy, chippy Mummerset for Merriman). Until that point, I had been relegated to doing lights (“You’re not the physical type to play Wilde, Peter”). Lighting is not hard on this play. There was minimum scene stealing when I did it. I hope.
Morgan Philpott did it as basically undistinguishable butlers – a waistcoat doesn’t do it (and we’re still arguing whether he changed it). He did it brilliantly, so that Lane / Merriman became the single Svengali, scene shifting, presenting necessary props for the cast with pinpoint timing accuracy, appearing from nowhere through the multiple doors and hatches in the blank set… lighting cigarettes, swapping plants, handing over or taking back props. Just “a butler.” It was a great addition to the play.
In London: Jack (Benedict Salter) and Gwendolen (Claudia Jolly)
Physical appearance counts (my boss was right, I’m far too large for Jack or Algernon). Peter Bray as Algernon has the wild curly hair cut and over the top costumes … we felt sorry for him in the hot heavy tweed plus fours for the country scenes. Sweat was trickling down his face. Then Benedict Salter as Jack had the neat moustache and hair for Jack. They worked so well together. The forced handshake was right in front of us, and the most elaborate I’ve seen it done. I had tears of laughter running down MY face at that point. Peter Bray has the toothy grin that makes Algernon so likeable. Algernon has to play music, which the expensive productions do with a grand piano, and the medium ones with an upright piano. The great outdoor one from Rain or Shine used a trumpet instead. Here Peter Bray played the tune on a blue plastic melodica (aka pianata), a short keyboard with a tube you blow into to make a sound.
Cecily (Charlotte Beaumont) and Gwendolen (Claudia Jolly)
Then Gwendolen (Claudia Jolly) was tall, and Charlotte Beaumont as Cecily was short – it always works (just as with Helena and Hermia in A Midsummer Night’s Dream). Both played it as 21st century sexy, which tends to be the given nowadays. I doubt that Wilde’s original heroines could have been quite so explicit, but nowadays you need it. Gwendolen has a lot of fun with ‘vibrations’ and Cecily leaps all over Algernon. We’re always hyper-critical of the tea scene. I prefer sugar lumps to a pourer, and I rather like having Gwendolen drink the tea in spite of it being full of sugar. This was a spit out. Karen said that while she liked the anachronisms, she would still have had china cups here to allow the pointed little finger work to be on display. But I loved the Battenburg. Say no more. The funniest moment for me was when a furious Gwendolen booted a plant pot off the stage.
Time for tea. Claudia Jolly as Gwendolen, Morgan Philpott as Merriman, Charlotte Beaumont as Cecily. Astroturf marks the garden.
Connie Walker played Lady Bracknell and thankfully avoided the hooting dowager. This Lady Brackell was younger (the text points to middle-aged, not elderly) and pretty nervy and aggressive, rather than detached snooty. The interpretation works for me. She passed the “handbag” test (which is NOT channelling Edith Evans).
Lady Bracknell assesses Cecily. L to R: Algernon (Peter Bray), Cecily (Charlotte Beaumont), Lady Bracknell (Connie Walker), Jack Worthing (Benedict Salter), Gwendolen (Claudia Jolly)
Wendy Nottingham was a well-pointed Miss Prism, making her attraction to Canon Chasuble (different productions label him as Reverend, Canon and Doctor, I note) clear with a nervy twitter, but not over-modest. Canon Chasuble was played tall and straight by Jim Creighton. You can get laughs from Chasuble, but in the play, the other characters are helped by having him played straight.
Back to lighting. Normally you don’t do much, which is why it was always a boring “Switch on / Switch off” task when I did it. Generally you’d light warm interior for Algernon’s apartment in London, and bright daylight for the garden in Act 2, and somewhere in between for the house interior in Act 3. There is no need for changing levels within acts. Here I noticed lights going up and down on interchanges. I can’t see the point, though it wasn’t a problem.
Actually, we always did what they did here and made minimal difference between Act 2 and Act 3 – ignore Wilde, it can all be played in the garden. As usual, the best interval point is after Act 1 in London, then combining Act 2 and 3 in a longer second half, unless you REALLY need ice cream sales, when like Wilde you’d have two intervals. You don’t need two intervals. Here the first part was 40 minutes, the second 70 minutes. Don’t pause between the second and third acts. Cecily and Gwendolyn should observe the men from the house, but they did that by lowering a modern white PVC window frame for them to look through (maintaining anachronism) and then Merriman the butler whipped up the astroturf circle which the garden table had been on with a splendid flourish.
It’s fast-paced, aided by the incredible amount of footwork put in by Morgan Philpott. The director’s concept of Lane / Merriman as stage manager / Svengali / Butlers worked a dream. I don’t know how he timed it. No lingering on lines, no drawling and long pausing. It benefitted. The unique point was the anachronistic props and the butler. They didn’t mess with the characters, as the two recent Vaudeville Theatre ones did. First David Suchet in drag as Lady Bracknell in 2015, then with Classic Spring a rampantly bisexual Algernon flirting with Lane in 2018. They didn’t pour a fortune into expensive Victorian interiors and gardens either. As I’ve said in reviews, this play works read aloud in a circle. It doesn’t need extraneous stuff. It’s in the text. You need good actors performing it with vigour, which is just what you got here.
The happy ending: Lady Bracknell, Algernon and Cecily, Gwendolen and Jack, Miss Prism and Canon Chasuble, Merriman
The result was for the first time since Rain or Shine’s outdoor production in 2010, that I found myself laughing aloud again at lines I know backwards. I went in thinking they couldn’t possibly draw a laugh from me. They did all the way. It all came across as fresh – which it hadn’t the last three times I saw it.
*****
WHAT THE CRITICS SAID:
What a shame the main London critics miss this … their loss!
5 star
Philip Tull, Sardines *****
4 star
Charlotte Downes, Broadway World ****
Julia Rank, The Stage ****
David Woodward, Spy In The Stalls, ****
LINKS ON THIS BLOG:
THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST
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
Importance of Being Earnest 2018 by Oscar Wilde, Classic Spring Theatre
PETER BRAY
The White Devil, RSC 2014
The Roaring Girl, RSC 2014
Arden of Faversham, RSC 2014
Much Ado About Nothing, Rose Kingston, 2018
JIM CREIGHTON
An Enemy of The People, Chichester 2016
The Wars of The Roses, Rose, Kingston
CLAUDIA JOLLY
Girl From The North Country, Old Vic, 2017
BENEDICT SALTER
Lay Windermere’s Fan, Classic Spring, 2018
Leave a comment