THEATRE REVIEW: An Ideal Husband

CORRUPT politicians — or even sporting figures — of every generation have a habit of standing the truth on its head to claim they “did nothing wrong”.

So it is with Oscar Wilde’s Sir Robert Chiltern, a rising MP, who faces being exposed as a man who built his career, reputation and fortune on selling confidential Government information to a stock exchange speculator so that he and his buyer could become filthy rich.

Wilde put a lot of himself and his own experience into this play about a man faced with the prospect of ruin.

At the time he wrote it, in 1893, Wilde was already being blackmailed by rent boys, and the homophobic Marquess of Queensberry was waiting for his chance to bring him down.

Before the play’s run was over, Wilde had been arrested and Reading Jail awaited him.

The play is a savage satire on late-Victorian values and continues Wilde’s themes of how we represent ourselves to others and how we can be true to ourselves.  

Chiltern’s past comes back to haunt him when an incriminating letter falls into the hands of the blackmailing Mrs Cheveley, in a wonderful star turn by Laura Callahan, who delivers delightful vivacity and wit.

Sir Robert represents the empty sham of public office and his blindly adoring wife symbolises foolishness to the point where she can forgive and forget all - including her principles.

It is left to Viscount Goring, nicely played by Simon Naylor, a dandified idler who recognises that life cannot be understood without charity and forgiveness, to offer the human sympathy of the play by capturing his underlying goodness and sanity.

Goring is perfectly matched by Agnetha Spencer’s Mabel.

Wilde’s plot is full of awkward contrivances which can drag out the second half but the production does full justice to its genuine substance as well as Wilde’s trademark wit.

A J Foley brings out the posturing element in Chiltern’s public virtue and his corresponding rage when his dark secret is revealed and he turns on his over-idealising wife to announce that she has ruined him.

Rachel Gray is equally powerful as the wife who realises she has worshipped a false idol and has to learn to live with human flaws.

Barry Worthington as Lord Caversham and Niamh Adams (Mrs Marchment) and Ruth Langric (Countess Basildon), Alex Wilson (Phipps) offer strong support.

The whole production, pacily directed by Ann O’Connell on her debut for the Dilys Guite Players, looks handsome with black ties, smoking jackets and silken gowns adding style to a sumptuous, cleverly devised set.

Wilde’s play is of its time, probing possible differences between men and women as they are socially constructed by the double standards of the era as the lie of marital bliss is exposed.  

Elderly aristo Lady Markby, played by Carolyn Edwards, fires off much of Wilde’s views about politics and society but happiness breaks out at the end.