Review: An Ideal Husband

This review was originally written for The Public Reviews.

An Ideal Husband – Rosemary Branch Theatre, London

Writer: Oscar Wilde
Director: Charlie Ward
The Public Reviews Rating: 3/5

An Ideal Husband is a wonderful testament to Oscar Wilde’s wit and perception of society. In the programme, Charlie Ward declares his aim to strip the play of its paraphernalia and let the extraordinary characters shine though. In this goal, he has been entirely successful. With an almost complete lack of props, scenery and backdrop, this show's success has been pinned on nothing but the source material’s endearing charm and the cast’s ability to portray it.

On the first account, there was never any chance of disappointment. Wilde’s unique mastery of the English language, especially through dialogue, has given those behind the performance an opportune base to build a play around. The setting of a society experiencing great change and a revolution of woman’s rights is delicately balanced in the background of each character’s life.

When it comes to the cast to deliver the material, they do so with complete confidence. Every member of the team looks perfectly comfortable in their role and Kieran Simms’ Lord Goring, a disconnected man, unashamedly willing to pass on his views of society, is portrayed with an astoundingly obvious enthusiasm.

However, there is a divide in the performances on display and it's fitting with An Ideal Husband’s central theme. In every account, Sheridan Johnson, Emily MacDonald and Rose Robinson completely outshine their male counterparts. They provide enjoyable, but also engrossing and believable, turns as each of their characters. Johnson is the stand-out of the night, bringing chemistry and pace to the role of the morally questionable Mrs Cheveley, making her character as bizarrely likeable as Oscar Wilde would have wanted. As she strives to blackmail the increasingly desperate Robert Chiltern, it becomes so easy to root for her to succeed, despite the worst intentions she brings.

The problem with the male leads does not lie with whether they are enjoyable to watch. They are rarely anything but. It's more that they are not consistently believable in their roles. Their speech is slow and their movements are unwieldy to match. It doesn’t often detract from the overall feel of the play, but by the end of the first act, Sunny Moodie's Robert Chiltern looks uncomfortable not just from the growing pressure to sacrifice his morality, but from an inability to move around the stage in a natural fashion.

Beyond this, most cast members should be commended on their ability to hold an audience with no assistance from a set, lighting and sound. The desired goal of a stripped down performance is a noble one but there's a constant feeling that a little help would give the play a welcome extra dimension.

In the second act, as the motivations and actions of each character are questioned, Wilde’s writing is again the driving force of success. There is little action on display and a lack of context to reinforce the plot's true themes. When the lights dim, the audience is left slightly uncertain of if the story has actually concluded.

Despite this, at no point is the plot or acting boring. It is impossible not to be entertained by the dialogue and how it's represented. The problem is that, as the basic storyline progresses, there's little development of the sub-plots or the context of what is happening in these characters’ lives.

Muckle Roe’s production of An Ideal Husband is in no way an insult to the work of Oscar Wilde. In fact, it is a great vessel for his story. It just adds little to what is already on offer, other than an impressive female cast and a clear confidence from all involved. There are a lot of reasons to see this adaptation, but few to make it a definitive portrayal of the political comedy.

Runs until 7th April

Find the original review, and many others, here: www.thepublicreviews.com/an-ideal-husband-rosemary-branch-theatre-london/