Reviews 2000
Reviews 2000
✭✭✭✭✩
by Oscar Wilde, directed by Susan Ferley
Shaw Festival, Court House Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 27-September 24, 2000
“This Is a Woman of Great Importance”
One of the easiest ways to see the difference between the two largest theatre festivals in Canada is to note that while this year the Stratford Festival is presenting Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” for the fifth time (albeit in the 4-act version), the only play by Wilde it has ever done, the Shaw Festival is presenting “A Woman of No Importance”, the fourth play in their survey of Wilde’s dramatic works. While “Earnest” may be Wilde’s greatest and best-known play, it is also an anomaly in his oeuvre, in which flippant epigrammatic wit is more commonly mixed with sentimentality, melodrama and social criticism. Surveying all of Wilde’s plays as the Shaw Festival is doing does everyone who loves theatre a far greater service than merely trotting out his greatest hit time after time.
The Shaw Festival production makes the best possible case for “A Woman of No Importance”. One does not exit the play with the commonly held notion that this is the least successful of Wilde’s four social comedies; rather, one leaves feeling that this play provides the clearest insight into Wilde’s real views of British society and of the relations of men and women. The play begins much in the “Earnest” mode with a group of characters in a country house trading epigrams, but once the American visitor, Hester Wolsey, gives her speech condemning the hollowness of British society, immediately followed by the entrance of Mrs. Arbuthnot, the wronged “Woman” on the title, it is as if the veil of pleasant triviality we have been enjoying as been lifted to reveal a core of corruption that must be faced. As this play demands, the Shaw company rises to the challenge of exposing the passion that lies beneath the deceptive surface of wit.
What sets the slight plot in motion is a party at the country house of Lady Hunstanton where the witty but thoroughly amoral Lord Illingworth announces that he has made the young Gerald Arbuthnot his secretary. During the gathering of a group of upper class eccentrics, Illingworth and his equally amoral female counterpart, Mrs. Allonby, bet on whether Illingworth can seduce the visiting American Hester Worsley, who is in love with Gerald. Events come to a head with the arrival of Mrs. Arbuthnot, who was seduced by Illingworth 20 years ago and who became Gerald’s mother, leaving her son and everyone else to believe the father is dead. The play ultimately comes down to a contest of wills between mother and father for possession of their son.
The play is a triumph for Mary Haney as Mrs. Arbuthnot. The incredible intensity she brings to her character cuts through the potential melodrama of the role and totally involves us in her plight. She makes viscerally exciting what could in any other hands seem hopelessly clichéed. As her undoer, Lord Illingworth, Jim Mezon must share in her triumph because he brings a complexity to a character who could easily seem merely a villain. He makes us see that Illingsworth’s paradoxical epigrams are not just a cover for his amorality but rather a symptom of it. The same is true of Brigitte Robinson in the role of Mrs. Allonby. In her early banter with Illingworth she draws the same amount of laughter as he does, but she delivers her long speech on what the ideal man is like in such a cynical way that she draws none. This is not a flaw since it prepares for the change in atmosphere that comes over the play with Hester's response of disgust and Mrs. Arbuthnot’s entrance.
As the American Hester Worsley, Severn Thompson adds another to the collection of impassioned, idealistic young women she has played. Her forceful speech condemning the very people whose wit we have been enjoying is central to the play’s change of mood. Mike Wasko does very well in the role of the innocent boy, intrigued with the power Lord Illingworth offers, true to the love Hester offers and finally convinced by the moral stance his mother demands.
Sharry Flett plays Lady Hunstanton, the hostess for the party that lasts for the first three acts. While vivacious and charming she makes us wonder increasingly about her character’s muddling of what is significant with that is trivial, symbolic of Wilde’s upper class in general. Jennifer Phipps plays Lady Caroline, one of the visitors, as an early study for Lady Bracknell from “Earnest”. Here her domineering is confined to bullying her husband played by Norman Browning, who is able to draw a clear, humorous portrait of this man despite having very few lines. Jillian Cook plays Lady Stutfield as a more troubling version of Lady Hunstanton, agreeing enthusiastically with whoever last spoke, no matter what their point of view. Bernard Behrens makes the minor role of Archdeacon Daubeny a treat as each of his hearty statements about his wife reveals ever more unpleasant facts about her ill health. The guest list is rounded out with Lorne Kennedy playing Mr. Kelvil, MP, and Tony van Bridge as Lord Alfred Rufford.
The play is beautifully designed by William Schmuck, whose costumes suggest the Victorian period in the black-clad Lady Caroline and its demise with Lady Hunstanton’s colourful pre-Raphaelite gown and Hester’s simple white dress. The set is well lil by Michael Kruse, who is especially good at suggesting the morning chill in Mrs. Arbuthnot’s house.
The reviews of the opening night performance by the main Toronto papers were not enthusiastic and mentioned director Susan Ferley’s inability to help the actors make the transition from comedy to melodrama. Seeing the production six weeks later, I noticed no such difficulty. The actors seemed fully in command. Ferley, who has never directed at the Shaw before, much less at the intimate Court House Theatre, used much simpler blocking patterns than one is used to seeing there. Her idea of setting the play in the fall in a good one since, according to Northrop Frye, that is the season for irony. In this play we have not merely the flippant verbal irony of party guests, but the more fundamental irony Wilde promotes that the “Woman” which Victorians along with Illingworth would regard as of “no importance” not only demands to be heard but triumphs.
©Christopher Hoile
Photo: Mary Haney as Mrs. Arbuthnot. ©2000 Shaw Festival.
2000-08-31
A Woman of No Importance