THEATRE REVIEW: AN IDEAL HUSBAND
27 May'10

‘Husband’ achieves Wilde’s vision

JOHN COULBOURN - QMI Agency
Rating: 4 out of 5

NIAGARA-ON-THE-LAKE — It is difficult to say what Oscar Wilde, one of the leading proponents of the aesthetic movement at its peak, would think of the look of his AN IDEAL HUSBAND, which launched the 2010 Shaw Festival season Wednesday night on the mainstage. It’s even tougher to say what he would have thought of the production itself.

For although one might quibble with director Jackie Maxwell’s often plain-as-pudding staging, and designer Judith Bowden’s almost dank designs, there is no denying that at a certain point they come together to create a production that serves the purposes of the play, if not necessarily the vision of the playwright.

Wilde, of course, intended the play to serve as both a showcase and a commentary on life at the epicentre of Victorian society, setting it in the social and political whirlwind surrounding Lord Robert Chiltern — a rising young politican played by Patrick Galligan — and his politically savvy and adoring wife, Lady Gertrude, played by Catherine McGregor.

They are an ideal couple, socially irreproachable, morally unimpeachable and politically unstoppable. That is, until the conniving Mrs. Cheveley (Moya O’Connell) comes along, armed with a letter proving Lord Robert has not always been the paragon of virtue he purports to be. And unless Lord Robert is prepared to endorse a major public swindle, she will expose him as the flawed man he is to the world and, worse, to his loving and morally upright wife. It falls to the notoriously profligate Viscount Goring (Steven Sutcliffe) to save the day, which he does with dispatch, strewing Wildean bon mottes in his wake like so many rose petals.

Like the rest of Wilde’s canon, this is a delightful and amusing piece of work. Its cleverness, polish and wit disguise beautifully observed, deeply affectionate and astute observations on the follies and foibles of the human condition. But whereas Wilde clearly meant for the world of Lord and Lady Chiltern to sparkle and dance like the finest French champagne, designer Bowden decants it instead as though it were some suspect vintage of a Spanish red — all dark notes, wrapped round with wrought iron and black bunting. Bowden’s often strange and unwearable costuming choices, meanwhile, echo the era without ever really evoking it.

Thankfully, the cast — rounded out by strong work from Lorne Kennedy, Wendy Thatcher and Marla McLean in supporting roles — seems determined to rise above the design. In the main, they succeed. Galligan and McGregor might not create the portrait of connubial bliss the story demands, but they do a fine job of filling their world with noble outrage and morality.

And although Sutcliffe’s Viscount Goring has a few too many Joan Crawford moments courtesy of, one suspects, some of Bowden’s more egregious costuming excesses, he does a bang-up job of providing the beating heart and human conscience that brings this production to life.

O’Connell, too, suffers from Bowden’s couture. Ultimately she seems so concerned with wearing it that she (and director Maxwell) forget that in a Wilde, wild world painted in delightful shades of moral grey, even its villains (or, perhaps, especially its villains) should not be painted only in shades of black and white.

Any production of this work on these stages invites comparison to Duncan McIntosh’s 1995 production and its celebrated revival in 1996 — a production that seemed to fuse seamlessly with Wilde’s vision on several fronts. This production definitely suffers a little by such comparison. As a director, Maxwell seems determined to present AN IDEAL HUSBAND as a political drama with comedic overtones and not, as was intended, as a social comedy with dramatic overtones.

In the world of Wilde, THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING EARNEST was, after all, merely a title, not a stage direction.