I’m a Wilde freak, I freely admit it. There’s a gold lip-print decorating Oscar Wilde’s grave with my DNA on it. So, on the one hand, the stylish poster advertising the Hampstead Players’ An Ideal Husband pretty much had me at “An”. On the other hand, I tend to think of Ideal Husband as one of Wilde’s trickier plays. It’s funny, but it’s also complicated, suspenseful, and moving – and that’s a difficult combination to pull off.
So, does the Hampstead Players’ production succeed? Put it this way: The play starts with a single character on stage, and before he even says his first line, I’m smiling. Halfway into the first scene, I’m in stitches. (A nicely responsive audience is cackling behind me, as well.) This production nails the comedy, with some absolutely hilarious performances, but director Jane Mayfield and assistant director Annie Duarte also give the play the air of menace that’s so essential to the plot. Most impressively of all, Mayfield and Duarte, together with a very talented cast, bring Wilde’s morally ambiguous characters to life in a way that gets the audience to feel along with them, even when we can’t agree with them.
That single figure who opens the play is the butler, Mason (Stephen Clarke), who skilfully brings a touch of subtle, almost completely silent comedy to those first few moments, as he surreptitiously consults his shirt cuffs before announcing the first guests at a fashionable London party. It’s a party the way only Wilde can write them, full of larger-than-life characters who are interesting on their own, as well as being spot-on satires of social types. John Willmer does a wonderfully deadpan turn as the Earl of Caversham. The Earl is the kind of man who can command an entire room with a look, but he’s slyly snarky enough to be likeable, and Wilmer uses Wilde’s language masterfully to create that impression. Cliff Burgess is on top form, too, as the Vicomte de Nanjac, the enthusiastic French attaché who provides a hilarious outside perspective on English society. However, it’s Judy Burgess and Patrice Dorling who really make this scene. Their lively, coquettish society ladies are enormous fun to watch, and both actresses are good enough to get the audience giggling with nothing more than a raised eyebrow.
At the party, all eyes are turned to the mysterious and glamourous Mrs. Cheveley (Sarah Barron), who’s accompanying the respectable Lady Markby (Nina Trebilcock, who takes a somewhat shadowy character and gives her real presence, making her both funny and endearing). Mrs. Cheveley is a woman on a mission: She wants a minute alone with the host, the up-and-coming young cabinet minister Sir Robert Chiltern (Graham FitzGerald).
FitzGerald’s Chiltern is such a consummate MP that it cracks me up; I keep expecting him to start telling Mrs. Cheveley earnestly about the heartbreaking problem of wastewater drainage in his constituency. He’s got the effortless charm of a young Tony Blair, with the ambition to match; when he smiles, the light glints off his teeth with an audible “ting!”. He is, in other words, the perfect statesman.
Mrs. Cheveley is about to blow that all to smithereens.
It turns out that she and Chiltern had the same mentor in power politics: the late and unlamented Baron Arnheim, one of those characters who’s all the more fascinating because we never see him. Under the Baron’s guidance, Chiltern made his fortune by selling just the right piece of top-secret information, at just the right time, to just the wrong person. Unfortunately, Mrs. Cheveley has a letter proving Chiltern’s underhanded dealings. She’s also got a lot of money sunk into a dodgy canal scheme (I used to live in a neighbourhood like that, where you couldn’t walk to the bus stop without someone trying to flog you a dodgy canal scheme), and Chiltern’s commission has just come out with a report exposing the scheme. If he agrees to muzzle the commission, the letter never sees the light of day. If not… well.
I love the sheer relish Sarah Barron pours into playing this character. Her Mrs. Cheveley is magnetic, but at the same time subtle enough that the audience can instantly believe she’s pulling all the strings behind the scenes – and that’s what gives the show its chilling edge.
Chiltern is desperate to get out of Mrs. Cheveley’s trap without the world – and more importantly, his wife, who worships him – finding out what he once did. Ellie Ruggeri does a fantastic job as Lady Chiltern. It’s not an easy role, given that Lady Chiltern comes across on the page as almost sickeningly good, and severe on anyone who doesn’t meet her high standards. Ruggeri, though, turns her into a quiet powerhouse: warm and engaging with her friends, but able to stand up to Mrs. Cheveley with such dignity that we end up rooting for her.
Eventually, Chiltern turns for help to his best friend, Lord Goring (Adam Baxter), an aristocrat with a wicked sense of humour who never takes anything seriously except buttonholes. Lord Goring is a big, splashy, fun character, but Baxter adds extra layers to him that make him a sympathetic and complex hero, as well. Baxter’s version of Lord Goring is capable of ramping up the silliness to Bertie Wooster levels – or turning deadly serious – but it’s all calculated, the product of a mind that’s more than capable of going up against Mrs. Cheveley’s machinations. We only catch glimpses of that mind under the frivolousness, and it’s fascinating.
Initially, Lord Goring doesn’t seem like the most reliable ally in a non-floral-fashion-related crisis (although if catastrophe ever struck London’s strategic supplies of carnations, he would undoubtedly be your man). However, he rises to the occasion, and the conversations between the two men as they scheme to solve Chiltern’s predicament are one of the most interesting parts of the play. This is where Wilde really plays around with the moral ambiguity of the situation. My favourite moment comes when Chiltern admits, with a kind of awful triumph in his expression, that he doesn’t regret selling government secrets because it got him the funds he needed to get into office. He then rightly points out that it’s easy for Lord Goring to be horrified by that; Goring’s never been without money in his life. It’s an uncomfortable moment, not only for Goring, but for the audience. We can’t help but sympathise with them both – and we suddenly realise that we’ve come a long way from the stylish comedy of manners where we started.
The climax of the play is part farce, part thriller, as Chiltern, Mrs. Cheveley, and Lord Goring circle one another; coincidences and cases of mistaken identity pile up; and, at one point, Goring ends up with a house crammed with people – none of whom can be allowed to find out that the others are even there. It’s like what would happen if Oscar Wilde wrote a Benny Hill sketch, but it’s nail-bitingly suspenseful at the same time. A special shout-out has to go to Stephen Tucker as Goring’s valet, Phipps, who gets stuck stage-managing his master’s insane life. Tucker’s deadpan delivery and his hilariously long-suffering expressions make his scenes among the funniest in the play.
In the end, Lord Goring manages to turn the tables on Mrs. Cheveley and save Chiltern’s career – but not before Chiltern is forced to confess everything to his wife. The revelation nearly breaks them up, but when the heartbroken Lady Chiltern makes a mistake that could easily have wrecked her own reputation, it gives her a new perspective on her husband’s screwup. The relationship between the Chilterns really forms the heart of the play, and I like the natural, understated affection between the two of them in this production. When Lady Chiltern finds out her husband’s secret and melts down, it’s very subtle and moving, and it makes their ultimate reconciliation feel well-earned.
Lord Goring gets his own happy ending: He’s spent most of the play flirting outrageously with Chiltern’s sister, Mabel (Rose Abderabbani), and they finally end up together. Abderabbani’s Mabel is a thoroughly enjoyable character: she’s warm and likeable, but with an acid wit that’s a heck of a lot of fun. Even though it’s obvious from the start where they’re going, her relationship with Goring is also great to watch, mainly because of the hints of real vulnerability these two perfectly poised characters bring out in each other. When Goring finally, seriously proposes to her, he’s so genuinely nervous that it catches the audience offguard, and it’s charming.
Mayfield brings the setting of the play forward into the 1960s, swapping corsets for cocktail dresses, Art Nouveau for Art Deco, and a political crisis over the Suez Canal for… um, a political crisis over the Suez Canal. (Politicians, like playwrights, know that you don’t mess with a classic formula.) The set creates an elegant world of clean lines and sleek, slinky touches, its fresh black-and-white colour scheme the perfect choice to set off the moral grey areas within the play. The costume designs add a real flair, and the women’s exquisite dresses in particular help create the characters.
Now, anyone who actually expects me to make a crack like, “This was an ideal show,” or, “Truly, an ideal night at the theatre,” is in for a long wait. Not that it isn’t true – this was a fantastic production – but I’m certainly above using such cheap puns to describe it.
So let’s just say that I hope you enjoyed it as much as I. Deal?