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Stars explained: * A production of no real merit
with failings in all areas. ** A production showing evidence of not
enough time or effort, or even talent, and which never breathes any real
life into the piece – or a show lumbered with a terrible script. *** A
good enjoyable show which might have some small flaws but has largely
achieved what it set out to do.**** An excellent show which shows a
great deal of work and stage craft with no noticeable or major
flaws.***** A four star show which has found that extra bit of magic
which lifts theatre to another plane. |
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Bagging a romance in earnest
Algernon (left, Lee Davies) and John (Rod Blissett) listen in anxiously as Cecily (left, Natalie Ashcroft) and Gwendolen (Phebe Jackson) discuss their fate The Importance of Being Earnest
The Grange Players
Grange Playhouse
**** OSCAR Wilde’s best-loved comedy is also
his most enduring, and despite being 120 years old is still as witty and
fresh as when it first appeared on Valentine’s Day in 1895. It is full of wit with a familiar story and a
host of memorable quotes, which audiences greet with laughter and smiles
as old friends. Its wicked satire was aimed at the hypocrisy,
superficial striving for status and triviality which afflicted Victorian
society, but its charm, in part, lies with the fact that snobbery is
universal; we all know someone whose pretentiousness is legendary. To work more than a century on though, it is a
play that needs to be done in period dress to set the scene and, more
importantly to set it within its own time and Rosemary Manjunath has
done a fine job in decking out the cast in the latest fashions, for 1895
that is. So with such a well-loved and well known play,
the second best known and quoted after Hamlet according to some
observers, the interest these days is not so much on what as on how it
is performed and in Lee Davis as Algernon and Rod Bissett as John
Worthing, the two would be Ernests, Grange has found a nicely balanced
double act. Bissett’s Worthing is the more serious, less he Their battle for muffins in the garden scene when
Algie arrives at Worthing’s country pile is a comic gem, as is the chase
around Algie’s flat to retrieve the fateful cigarette case which sets
the ball rolling. After an inauspicious
start you warm to the pair as they bumble through life like a 19th
century Just William and Ginger, each leading a double life to relieve
them of social responsibilities and, one must be honest, give them a
certain unaccountable rakish freedom. A sermon for every occasion all at the drop of a cassock from the Rev Canon Chasuble, DD, played by Brian Lycett Phebe Jackson gives a fine performance as
Gwendolen, who always travels with her diary as “one should always have
something sensational to read in the train". She gives us an independent, free spirit of a
young woman, at least when her mother, the harridan Lady Bracknell is
not around. Director Martin Groves has gone for the modern
trend for a male Lady Bracknell - a production at the Abbey Theatre in
Dublin 10 years ago had an all-male cast – with David Stone taking on
the role in a very po-faced manner, speaking in measured, emotionless
sentences broken up into well enunciated phrases to make her ladyship a
most unlikeable character each time she enters a room like a cruising
dreadnought. Michael Fitzgerald, who played her ladyship at
the Bristol Old Vic in 2005, was quoted in The Guardian as saying: “A
man can play Lady Bracknell because she is sexless. Many great actresses
have played Lady Bracknell with a notion that she has a sense of humour,
which is completely wrong, or that she is fond of her nephew, Algie. I
don't think that woman is fond of anything. She's simply right and
everybody else, therefore, is wrong.” Against all these headstrong characters we have
sweet, innocent(ish) Cecily, 18 and Worthing’s ward, played by Natalie
Ashcroft. She is, on the face of it, a naive country girl, unaccustomed
to the ways of London society, except that her childlike exterior hides
a quite determined character who is more than a match for anyone - and
one who was engaged to Algie/Ernest long before he knew it. More could perhaps have been made of the tea and
cake battle between Ernest’s warring two fiancées, Gwendolen and Cecily,
in the Manor House garden perhaps but that was made up for by the pass
the plate of muffins routine of John/Jack/Ernest and Algernon/Ernest
which followed. Hovering around we had Miss Prism, played by Gwen
Evans, the quiet, prim and proper Governess to Cecily, who had carried a
terrible secret for 28 years, who is attracted to the Rev. Canon
Chasuble, D.D, the local rector, played with suitable unworldly
vagueness by Brian Lycett, who has a sermon – the same one it appears –
for every occasion. He is also attracted to her which sows the seeds for
a happy ecclesiastical ending. The cast is completed with Sam Allan as Lane,
Algie’s butler, and Merriman, played by Christopher Waters, the butler
at Worthing’s Manor House along with Luke Groves as the Footman. Martin Groves not only directed by also designed
the set which was functional as Algie’s flat, with splendid leather
Chesterfields, nicely bucolic as the Manor House Garden and ended
splendidly as the Manor House drawing room. Full marks to the stage crew, incidentally, who
managed the change to house from garden in remarkably quick time for a
complete resetting of the stage between acts two and three. This is the most trivial of Wilde’s plays and
perhaps because of that is his most effective, full of charm, humour and
barbed wit. Its premiere saw Wilde at the height of his fame and power
but it was notable for a less theatrical but much more dramatic reason. The Marquess of Queensbury, father of Bosie, Lord
Alfred Douglas, planned to throw rotten veg at Wilde as he took a bow
but was denied entry. It was the start of the end for Wilde with first
his libel battle with the Marquess then his subsequent jailing for gross
indecency. Wilde died in 1900 and his works would never be performed
again in his lifetime. More than a century on
the law, and more importantly attitudes have changed and Wilde’s star is
shining brightly again, lighting up Grange Playhouse to 25-07-15 Roger Clarke
17-07-15 |
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donistic
of the two while Lee’s Algernon is flippant and self-indulgent, a
typical, wealthy end of the 19th century, society bachelor living
comfortably off family money.