LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
LADY WINDERMERE’S FAN
BY
OSCAR WILDE
AT THE METROPOLITAN ARTS CENTRE, BELFAST , NOVEMBER 14TH, 2012
Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde Adapted by Patrick J. O’Reilly Cast: Paul Boyd Lord Darlington , Dumby, Mrs. Cowper- Cowper Ruby Campbell Lady Windermere Dagmar Döring Mrs. Erlynne, Mr. Hopper, Lady Stutfield Neill Fleming Lord Windermere, Lady Stutfield Daithí Mac Suibhne Parker, Mr. Cecil Graham, Lady Plymdale, Lady Agatha Angie Waller Duchess of Berwick, Lord Augustus Lorton Crew: Lisa May Director Matthew Reeve Composer & Musical Director Diana Ennis Set & Costume Designer James McFetridge Lighting Designer Rory Casey Company Stage Manager Patrick Freeman Stage Manager Natalie Murphy Stage Manager Catherine Grealish Production Intern Stephen Beggs Producer / Company Manager Set Construction Bryan McCorkell at The Workshop Production Photography Neil Harrison Students on Placement Lois Taylor, Caroline McAuley & Lily Smyth Thanks to: Arts Council of Northern Ireland , Belfast City Council, The Bruiser Board of Directors, the MAC, Lyric Theatre, Penny Beggs & The South Bank Playhouse. Principal Funder
This production of Lady Windermere’s Fan is a contemporary view of the work through the lens of modern theatrical practice. Obviously Wilde lived in the era before Stanislavsky and Brecht but he was also extremely interested in mise en scene, stage design and the spatial geometry of the stage which underscored the interpersonal relationships depicted in his plays. The stage is dominated by the reddish colour of the backdrop which is a wall covered in blank portraits which are used throughout the production to counterpoint the character’s dialogue. If some extraneous sub-plot is mentioned or some minor characters referenced, they appear in some guise or disguise. The dominant colour sets the tone for the entire play which is a polite, trite social comedy. Underneath the shallow surfaces lurk depths of murkiness infested by terrible monstrous deeds or truths, the entire underpinnings of Victorian society where the secrets of the soul, in this case Mrs Erlynne or Lady Windermere, are divested, divulged and eventually shouted from the rooftops. Colours affect our moods, depict the variety of emotions that we either declare or hope to suppress and in choosing red for the backdrop we are led to believe that this is a study in scarlet or of a scarlet woman. Lady Windermere has the soul of a puritan, believing that everything and everyone is black or white, certainly not red and when it comes to her attention that her husband, Lord Windermere, is being visited by another woman, jumps to conclusions. The play is dominated by shallow contrivances familiar to those readers of penny dreadfuls or viewers of unfashionable yet popular Victorian melodramas as summarised, perhaps, in the early writings of Thomas Hardy. The point, for Wilde, is not to depict the extremities of human behaviour, something we expect of Shakespearian tragedy, for instance, but a shallow social surface being undermined by personal history, a force which is inescapable yet simultaneously suppressed. Wilde knew what he was doing with his writing, but not perhaps with his life, in relation to his contemporaries and as a consequence of the past of England , writing in English and the antagonistic relationship between England and Ireland . His social milieu was Victorian England he depicts the stiff upper lip of decorum and politeness with the savagery of a colonial invading the metropolis. Interestingly the company open each act with songs which depict the consequent happenings. This offers the play up as a series of scenes which are carefully cut together in some filmic sense. It might be also pertinent to say that they offer a kind of Brechtian view of the unfolding drama, as if the actual events are already known, the conclusion anticipated and only the residue left behind after plot is extracted to be considered. Since the plot is a bit contrived and even predictable to viewers of Victorian melodrama this then seems an obvious distancing effect but Wilde also offers us perspectives on the conventions, not only of Victorian society, but of Victorian theatre. For instance, his views on gender and the situation of women in Victorian society are consequentially informed, sophisticated and live in the light of great contemporaries such as Ibsen and Strindberg but perhaps even better than they were. Not only are these views made plain but Wilde undermines the conventions of Victorian melodrama by daring to make his heroines unrepentant, strong and determined, not wilting belles living in the shadow of the men that surround them. Lady Windermere is a character not a decoration her situation is real, its ending surprising and unpredictable. Mrs Erlynne realises that the past is not necessarily a prison its consequences can be evaded by reconciliation with the present even if this entails a sacrifice. However, the play worked at an unbelievable pace, as if the company actually knew that the audience must know the plot intimately which, of course, might or might not be true. Perhaps the pacing could have been slowed slightly, it seemed that the cast sometimes lacked the confidence to realise that they were, indeed, doing a very clever and intelligible rendering of Wilde’s play Lady Windermere’s Fan and not a kind of Facebook page or You Tube version of the play. But the acting of the central characters was very good, especially Dagmar Doring as Mrs Erlynne. There just seemed to be too much happening at times, too many happenings cluttered the auditorium and perhaps some focus was occasionally lost. The play seemed to be so reductive, reduced and foreshortened that it was in danger of disappearing into a parody of itself and a slightly more relaxed and leisurely approach might carry the audience a bit more. But this is an excellent production of Lady Windermere’s Fan and worth viewing in conjunction with the Abbey Theatre’s production of Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The MAC is also an excellent, new addition to Belfast ’s enlarging series of venues for the arts.
Paul Murphy, Belfast
Lady Windermere’s Fan by Oscar Wilde Adapted by Patrick J. O’Reilly Cast: Paul Boyd Lord Darlington , Dumby, Mrs. Cowper- Cowper Ruby Campbell Lady Windermere Dagmar Döring Mrs. Erlynne, Mr. Hopper, Lady Stutfield Neill Fleming Lord Windermere, Lady Stutfield Daithí Mac Suibhne Parker, Mr. Cecil Graham, Lady Plymdale, Lady Agatha Angie Waller Duchess of Berwick, Lord Augustus Lorton Crew: Lisa May Director Matthew Reeve Composer & Musical Director Diana Ennis Set & Costume Designer James McFetridge Lighting Designer Rory Casey Company Stage Manager Patrick Freeman Stage Manager Natalie Murphy Stage Manager Catherine Grealish Production Intern Stephen Beggs Producer / Company Manager Set Construction Bryan McCorkell at The Workshop Production Photography Neil Harrison Students on Placement Lois Taylor, Caroline McAuley & Lily Smyth Thanks to: Arts Council of Northern Ireland , Belfast City Council, The Bruiser Board of Directors, the MAC, Lyric Theatre, Penny Beggs & The South Bank Playhouse. Principal Funder
This production of Lady Windermere’s Fan is a contemporary view of the work through the lens of modern theatrical practice. Obviously Wilde lived in the era before Stanislavsky and Brecht but he was also extremely interested in mise en scene, stage design and the spatial geometry of the stage which underscored the interpersonal relationships depicted in his plays. The stage is dominated by the reddish colour of the backdrop which is a wall covered in blank portraits which are used throughout the production to counterpoint the character’s dialogue. If some extraneous sub-plot is mentioned or some minor characters referenced, they appear in some guise or disguise. The dominant colour sets the tone for the entire play which is a polite, trite social comedy. Underneath the shallow surfaces lurk depths of murkiness infested by terrible monstrous deeds or truths, the entire underpinnings of Victorian society where the secrets of the soul, in this case Mrs Erlynne or Lady Windermere, are divested, divulged and eventually shouted from the rooftops. Colours affect our moods, depict the variety of emotions that we either declare or hope to suppress and in choosing red for the backdrop we are led to believe that this is a study in scarlet or of a scarlet woman. Lady Windermere has the soul of a puritan, believing that everything and everyone is black or white, certainly not red and when it comes to her attention that her husband, Lord Windermere, is being visited by another woman, jumps to conclusions. The play is dominated by shallow contrivances familiar to those readers of penny dreadfuls or viewers of unfashionable yet popular Victorian melodramas as summarised, perhaps, in the early writings of Thomas Hardy. The point, for Wilde, is not to depict the extremities of human behaviour, something we expect of Shakespearian tragedy, for instance, but a shallow social surface being undermined by personal history, a force which is inescapable yet simultaneously suppressed. Wilde knew what he was doing with his writing, but not perhaps with his life, in relation to his contemporaries and as a consequence of the past of England , writing in English and the antagonistic relationship between England and Ireland . His social milieu was Victorian England he depicts the stiff upper lip of decorum and politeness with the savagery of a colonial invading the metropolis. Interestingly the company open each act with songs which depict the consequent happenings. This offers the play up as a series of scenes which are carefully cut together in some filmic sense. It might be also pertinent to say that they offer a kind of Brechtian view of the unfolding drama, as if the actual events are already known, the conclusion anticipated and only the residue left behind after plot is extracted to be considered. Since the plot is a bit contrived and even predictable to viewers of Victorian melodrama this then seems an obvious distancing effect but Wilde also offers us perspectives on the conventions, not only of Victorian society, but of Victorian theatre. For instance, his views on gender and the situation of women in Victorian society are consequentially informed, sophisticated and live in the light of great contemporaries such as Ibsen and Strindberg but perhaps even better than they were. Not only are these views made plain but Wilde undermines the conventions of Victorian melodrama by daring to make his heroines unrepentant, strong and determined, not wilting belles living in the shadow of the men that surround them. Lady Windermere is a character not a decoration her situation is real, its ending surprising and unpredictable. Mrs Erlynne realises that the past is not necessarily a prison its consequences can be evaded by reconciliation with the present even if this entails a sacrifice. However, the play worked at an unbelievable pace, as if the company actually knew that the audience must know the plot intimately which, of course, might or might not be true. Perhaps the pacing could have been slowed slightly, it seemed that the cast sometimes lacked the confidence to realise that they were, indeed, doing a very clever and intelligible rendering of Wilde’s play Lady Windermere’s Fan and not a kind of Facebook page or You Tube version of the play. But the acting of the central characters was very good, especially Dagmar Doring as Mrs Erlynne. There just seemed to be too much happening at times, too many happenings cluttered the auditorium and perhaps some focus was occasionally lost. The play seemed to be so reductive, reduced and foreshortened that it was in danger of disappearing into a parody of itself and a slightly more relaxed and leisurely approach might carry the audience a bit more. But this is an excellent production of Lady Windermere’s Fan and worth viewing in conjunction with the Abbey Theatre’s production of Wilde’s novel The Picture of Dorian Gray. The MAC is also an excellent, new addition to Belfast ’s enlarging series of venues for the arts.
Paul Murphy, Belfast
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