After you see (and you should) School for Scandal, Sheridan's delicious expose of gossip and malicious behavior in 18th century London, at the McCarter, it would be remiss of you if you did not venture up to the Paper Mill Playhouse to see An Ideal Husband, Oscar Wilde's equally nasty comedy of blackmail and scandal in 19th century London. It is rare to see these two perfectly suited sex and schemes-driven gems performed at the same time and so smartly.
1895 began as a banner year for Wilde, who had two hits -- An Ideal Husband, and The Importance Of Being Earnest -- running simultaneously on London stages. It ended as a bummer, however, when Wilde went on trial for perjury and sexual offences. His conviction led to the premature closing of both shows, as well as the well-received New York production of Husband. Curiously, and until Sir Peter Hall's revival of An Ideal Husband in 1992 at London's Globe Theater, the play had been more of a rarity than Earnest, or any of his other plays. Nothing could please me more than another opportunity to see this epigram-studded play, and so soon after seeing Hall's acclaimed production on Broadway in 1996. The last few years has brought about an unprecedented interest in the play, with productions springing up virtually everywhere. Granted, it proves a stretch for many in the Paper Mill audience, who take longer to respond to the torrent of Wilde-isms, than one might wish. This may be the fault of James Warwick's too studied and formal staging of Act 1, in which incidental characters stand, pose pretentiously, face front, and provide the play's exposition in the most stilted and dull manner. Once this opening section is past, the play, propelled now by the principal players, perks up with spit and polish.
If Warwick's vision avoids the darker subtext of Hall's production, most of the performers plunge into the cheeky matters and chatter with aplomb. In so much as it is a critics job is to take notes, either mental or written, I found myself, typically too dazzled by the cascading epigrams and wonderfully irreverent bon mots to ponder on their full meaning during the rush of the goings on. But, here's a beauty: The stuffy old Earl of Caversham (George S. Irving) asks his glib, if frightfully right, son Lord Goring (Daniel McDonald), "Do you understand everything you say?" To this, the amused Lord Goring replies, "Only if I pay very close attention." This is certainly what one must to do to fully benefit from this subversive critique of Victorian attitudes and institutions.
A standout is Irving, whose career in theater goes back to the original Broadway cast of Oklahoma! and has over the years become a Paper Mill favorite. He livens up many a talky time with his blustery attacks and affronts.
While An Ideal Husband is saturated with enough wit and wisdom to boggle the mind, it also lingers willfully and skillfully in its prescribed social and political milieu. It is a very serious comedy, dealing as it does with the dishonorable past of a now distinguished and honorable politician. Unlike the New York production, the Paper Mill production has afforded the play all the resplendent décor and costuming the play richly deserves. The chandelier lit ornately gilded various morning, noon and night rooms provided by designer Michael Anania, provoke as much ooh and ahs as Wilde's words eventually do.
An Ideal Husband begins with the lords and ladies of fashionable Belgravia who have gathered at the end of London's social season. These elegantly mannered, though ravenously indiscreet, gentry are at it again in the formal reception room of Sir Robert Chiltern's (David Ledingham) house in Grosvenor Square. The plot is quickly sent spinning through other rooms where some dirty laundry is getting an airing. It is no less than blackmail that reunites Chiltern with a woman from his past, the scheming adventuress Mrs. Cheveley (Stephanie Beacham). But, it is the devoted yet devastated Lady Chiltern (Fiona Hutchison) who must unite with wise idler Lord Goring (Daniel McDonald) to save her career-threatened husband and thus disentangle a scandalous web spun from power, money, and sex.
With refreshing originality McDonald substitutes Lord Goring's foppish excesses for a boyishly savant behavior that could easily appeal to women. Beacham, best know to American audiences as Sable Colby on TV's "Dynasty" and "The Colbys," also doesn't go over the top as the femme fatale Mrs. Cheveley -- except when it comes to David Murin's devilishly revealing gowns. Ledingham and Hutchison are excellent as the compromised and endangered Chilterns. Stephanie Cozart is both coy and cunning as Mabel Chiltern, in love with Lord Goring. It's all so marvelously convoluted and melodramatic, so fitting in this day where sleaze infiltrates with such ease into our political and social affairs, and yet so irresistibly Wilde.
