Theater Reviews—

‘The Ideal Husband’ Is An Ideal Opener For Town Players

By Julie Stern

Like the stock market, history tends to run in cycles: eras of great optimism and expansion are followed by gloomy downsizing of expectations. Similarly in literature, bursts of romantic creativity reach their peak and then spiral downward into an atmosphere of cynicism and ennui, in which wit and satire are the only game in town.

If it is no longer possible to create figures of Shakespearean stature, then the way to go is to be clever, like the 18th Century poets and dramatists, skewering the foolish and the uncool.

Oscar Wilde, the playwright, poet, novelist and author of wonderful children’s stories (The Happy Prince) fits into this tradition. Despite a life that was tragically ruined by public scandal and imprisonment for homosexuality, Wilde’s best known works are his comedies — The Importance of Being Earnest, Lady Windemere’s Fan and, the work that is currently being presented at Newtown’s Little Theater, The Ideal Husband. All three of these are frothy, witty confections that make lavish use of barbed one-liners, observations that poke fun at Victorian pretension and hypocrisy.

The title plays on the various meanings of the word “Ideal,” specifically whether Sir Robert Chiltern is a perfect husband or whether his adoring wife is clinging to an idealized picture of him. As the girl who regularly won the good conduct medal in school, Gertrude Chiltern derives great satisfaction from the knowledge that Sir Robert’s political career is based on absolute probity.

Unfortunately, his intention of delivering a report to Parliament in which he reveals that a highly speculative plan to dig a canal through the Argentine is as unrealistic a boondoggle as, say, a nuclear missile shield, is challenged by the machinations of the slimy and seductive Mrs Cheveley, a woman of the world who holds a lot of stock in the canal scheme and who also holds written proof that Sir Robert got the financial start in life which enabled him to marry his wife and enter politics by selling insider trading information  about the Suez Canal.

That was 16 years earlier. Now Mrs Cheveley is using blackmail, threatening to go public with this story, unless Sir Robert reverses his stand and takes a neutral position on the new canal, thereby restoring the value of her shares.

Caught between a rock and a hard place, the pompously noble Sir Robert can cave in to Mrs Cheveley’s demands, and thereby lose his wife’s respect when he waffles on an issue that she knows is wrong, or he can stick to his guns and lose both his wife’s respect and his political career when it comes out that his past contains the sin of having used his position in the government to make money for himself.

Into the breach steps Chiltern’s best friend, Lord Goring, a long-haired, self-mocking eccentric reminiscent of Wilde himself. Although to his father, the Earl of Caversham, Lord Goring is an outrageously useless slacker, young Arthur is actually a loyal friend who not only urges Sir Robert to remain true to his nobler principles, but also is clever enough to confound the wicked Mrs Cheveley and beat her at her own game.

The Town Players production, under the direction of Evelyne Thomas, has some very good acting in it, particularly by Charles Schoenfeld as Lord Goring, whose studiously affected poses are right on in capturing both the surface frivolity and the underlying strength.

Arthur’s dilletantism is his way of responding to the stuffiness and pomposity of fin de siecle English society, and Schoenfeld plays his character well, both when he is alone, and in his dialogues with his friend, his friend’s wife, his friend’s blackmailer, his father and even his butler.

Becky Rodia gains stature as the play moves on, in the role of Mabel Chiltern, Arthur’s eventual intended. However, the kind of snappy repartee that is familiar to fans of Hepburn and Tracy demands rapid-fire pacing. The patter would be more effective if it were delivered in faster, less sonorous tones.

Also the first act, which is set in the Chiltern household during a large party, is lavishly staged with very impressive performances by Ethyle Power, Marianne O’Shaughnessy and Lori Peck as a trio of foolish dowagers. However, the incessant string orchestra playing in the background works against the voices and rhythm of the main characters, not quite drowning them out but certainly taking away from the impact of their words.

Finally, it would have been more comfortable in a three-hour production had the air conditioning been turned on, after a day of temperature in the nineties, but fortunately the weather has calmed down and it probably won’t be that hot again for the rest of the run. So long as it’s cool, this is a play to enjoy, marked by Wilde’s intelligence and caustic wit, balanced by a pleasant and satisfying ending.

 

(Performances of Town Players’ 2001 season opener will continue on weekends until May 26. Tickets for all shows — Friday and Saturday at 8 pm, and a matinee on Sunday, May 20, at 2 pm — are $10. Contact the theater, which is on Orchard Hill Road, by calling 270-9144.)