Each year at Christmas my excitement is tempered slightly by a feeling of trepidation. Because maybe this year will be the one where I lose the magic. The one where I have finally grown up and don't want to wake up at 6am; the year I start to find the Christmas tunes annoying and the shopping an incovenience.
I felt the same way going to see An Ideal Husband. I loved Oscar Wilde so much as a teenager, but have not actually seen any for years. What if I suddenly find it all a bit silly?
Half way through the first scene I still had this feeling. The play kicks off in classic Wilde style with the dialogue a constant stream of epigrams, not all of which are actually all that clever, many of which are just nonsense. Luckily I was busy taking in the amazing set, a full height entrance hall in gold with a dramatic staircase entrance. And all the cast are in the most beautiful evening gowns which I'd give my left arm to unearth at a vintage fashion fair. I noticed that the cast acted well in the dresses, when they sat the skirts were spread out behind them and they walked to really show them off to best effect.
Then Mrs Cheveley, played by a brilliantly villanous Samantha Bond, drops her bombshell on the unsuspecting Robert Chiltern and the plot kicks in. She has a letter proving his money and political career were made by the act of selling a state secret when he was young. She blackmails him, demanding his public support for a crooked canal scheme in which she has a considerable financial investment. This is where the production becomes properly melodramatic and I'm hooked for the rest of the play.
It's all just so funny. This was mainly helped by Elliot Cowan who played a very good Lord Downing, Chiltern's dandy friend who is often the voice of reason. His moments of frustration when deperately trying to get people to leave his house were the funniest of the play. Another performance I really loved was that of Fiona Button as Mabel Chiltern, sister of Robert and love interest for Lord Downey. She brightened up the stage and delivered all her hilarious lines without losing any laughs.
I did think Alexander Hanson who played Sir Robert Chiltern could have been more convincing, in the scene where he really reproaches Gertrude his voice seemed to lack range. But perhaps that's because I find the profound morality in that scene slightly out of place.
On the Vaudeville theatre website there is a rather good video advert for this production in which the actors are asked if they agree with famous lines from the production, like "only dull people are brilliant at breakfast". It's a good advert but really the questions are a bit daft. Of course, Wilde's epigrams all seem clever but are nonsense really. Delightful entertaining nonsense but nevertheless nonsense. I think this is why I don't usually warm to An Ideal Husband so much as The Importance of Being Earnest, I feel like it is giving me a moral message that is inappropriate, and highlighted in this production. Surely modern women do not need warning against putting our men on a pedastal? Have you met them? We are not so daft as to expect great things of our men. Well, we don't need them to be our moral compass anyway.
There is a relevant message here, and not just the one about trusting polititians. It's about loving people for what they are rather than what you would like them to be. What Wilde misses of course is the improvement that can happen to a person who is loved for what they could be. Do we really think that Robert Chiltern would have stopped selling state secrets and become the moral upstanding politician he is had he not married Gerturde? A Wilde play as a moral message for a contemporary audience just doesn't work as soon as you start thinking about it. It is a social satire of the time, a melodrama and a witty comedy. And during most of this production where th play was treated as these things it was a joy to watch. And I have found that I still love Oscar Wilde; this is magic, funny and hugely entertaining.
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