delightful production...glorious building

July 7, 2005 performance, reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Oscar Wilde would have been delighted that the Williamstown Theatre Festival chose to honor him (and in his overweening pride would have considered it that) with a production of Lady Windermere’s Fan. At curtain call, one half-expected him to appear (downstage right, the stronger position) lily in hand to take his bow.

And the production given his play would have delighted him, too. How right they got it, these hand-me-down Brits, the Americans. They even knew better than to adopt phony British accents but gave just a hint of them that never obscured the lines themselves, those delicious epigrams that drop so casually from the lips of the actors.

As for the theatre itself, what a glorious building, an acoustical dream! To lend his name to this magnificent occasion was the least he could do — especially with the opening night audience who understood exactly what the actors and author meant.

Because, being Oscar, of course things would be so different from what on the surface they seemed, from what your everyday playwright would have tried to make them seem.

In his play the "fallen woman" would be the good woman and the virtuous wife dangerously near being a fallen woman. In his play, the wicked-seeming husband would be extremely commendable, though his virtue would remain untold to his wife. And as for happy endings, this one is happy enough without any maudlin recognition scene with the mother embracing the abandoned daughter and the daughter realizing in her mother, her savior.

Director Moises Kaufman has assembled a stunning cast and moves them about with éclat. The four acts are played as two with one intermission. Not an epigram is lost, not one key moment over-played. His taut opening scene foreshadows coming events and Wilde's ingenious ending, with secrets undisclosed, is never allowed to slip into pathos.

Although this is early Wilde, the great characters of "The Importance of Being Earnest" are already being formed. We early meet The Duchess of Berwick (Isabel Keating) bent on gossip and secure in her own importance; and in her we see the formidable Lady Bracknell; she even has a daughter in tow.

Two facetious young men with green carnations in their buttonholes (Benjamin Walker and Chandler Williams as Cecil Graham and Dumby) are early sketches for Jack and Algy who will dominate the future masterpiece. As such Wildean understudies, they are more than ample, dropping epigrams as they move languidly about.

These are minor characters who keep up the brilliant dialog and verbal ricochet, but this play has a more serious plot and it is there that the leading actors have a chance to shine.

Heroine Lady Windermere (Samantha Soule) is appealing and convincing in her Puritan views of how a virtuous wife should behave, but also believable in her almost fatal indiscretion. Her strongest scenes are those with her (unknown) mother and handled with finesse.

As Lady Erlynne, Jean Smart has the most dashing role in the play and seems to revel in it. She sweeps about the stage with dignity (and purpose) and is gloriously not penitent in the final scene. As a fallen woman she has had only a moment of material feeling but sheds it quickly and doesn't want to be a mother any more.

Adam Rothenberg, as tempter Lord Darlington, is not a villain. He really believes that Lord Windermere has treated his wife badly and wants to save her.

As for Lord Augustus Lorton, Jack Willis plays him as a corpulent buffoon, easily taken in, but good of heart. Of Lady Erlynne he can remark happily, "I might be married to her, she treats me with such demmed indifference!" but can at the play's end burst in to gullibly assure the Windermeres, "She has explained everything!" and believe it!

Lord Windermere (Corey Brill) has a rather thankless part, loving his wife but being unable for her sake to explain his association with Lady Erlynne. His best scene comes in the last act when he tilts with Lady Erlynne and still, for his young wife’s sake, keeps his secret.

Audiences will delight in this play because besides the verbal pyrotechnics, it has a plot, a bit of a fantastic one, but never allowed to be a maudlin one. It may be farce but never goes over the top. We can roar at the outrageous views characters express, but be charmed even by characters as minor as Mrs. Berwick’s inept daughter (Elliotte Crowell) who has a limited vocabulary but one large enough to land a suitor from Australia.

It is a pleasure to report that the Williamstown Theatre Festival is thus off to fine start in its new spectacular home, and when Roger Rees, the Artistic Director, appeared briefly at curtain call to welcome the entire audience to a celebration of champagne and birthday cake in the lobby, one felt personally invited and despite the lateness of the hour, lingered a while.

Oscar is being well-served in Williamstown.

Lady Windermere’s Fan
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