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An Ideal Husband
By Oscar Wilde
Directed by Jim Schneider
At Circle Theatre
7300 W. Madison
Forest Park, IL
Call 708-771-0700, tickets $23, $2 discount for seniors and students
Thursdays thru Saturdays at 8 pm
Sundays at 3 pm
Running time is 2 hours, 40 minutes with intermission
Through August 5, 2007
Oscar Wilde quotes from An Ideal Husband:
“To love oneself is the beginning of a life-long romance.”
"A man who can't talk morally twice a week to a large, popular, immoral audience is quite over as a serious politician."
"Fashion is what one wears oneself," he says. "What is unfashionable is what other people wear.
“I am the only person in the world I should like to know thoroughly; but I don't see any chance of it just at present.
“In the world there are only two tragedies. One is not getting what one wants, and the other is getting it.”
“What are American dry goods? American novels.”
“Twenty years of romance make a woman look like a ruin; but twenty years of marriage make her something like a public building.”
“There are a great many things you haven't got in America, I am told, Miss Worsley. They say you have no ruins and no curiosities. What nonsense! They have their mothers and their manners. “
“I remember a clergyman who wanted to be a lunatic, or a lunatic who wanted to be a clergyman, I forget which . . .”
“This is just what I should like to marry. A thoroughly sensible wife would reduce me to a condition of absolute idiocy in less than six months.”
“The truth is rarely pure and never simple. Modern life would be very tedious if it were either, and modern literature a complete impossibility.”
Rarely produced Oscar Wilde comedy of manners sparkles at Circle Theatre
Director Jim Schneider and Circle Theatre have a marvelous knack for mounting terrific classic drawing room comedies of manners. Featuring wonderfully vivid period-perfect costumes (designed by Elizabeth Shaffer) upon Bob Knuth’s innovative opulent looking gold trimmed drawing room set featuring red and gold velvet walls, large doors and classic Victorian furniture that magically whirls into a rich green and gold drawing room with an Oriental theme complete with paintings and jade vases, this production reminds one of a Court Theatre or a Goodman Theatre high budget production. The creative production team at Circle Theatre knows how to stretch their modest budget to deliver the look and atmosphere worthy of an Oscar Wilde play.
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An Ideal Husband is Oscar Wilde’s initial hit play first produced in London in 1895 is a much overlooked work being overshadowed by Wilde’s The Importance of Being Earnst which opened only a month after Husband. It is a serious comedy dealing with political intrigue, blackmail and featuring a suspenseful plot utilizing secrets, a letter and a brooch to deliver comedy, witticism and comments on the rules of civilized Victorian British society. Wilde has so many one-liners and euphemism in his stylized dialogue that one has to listen closely to gather them all in. Schneider’s talented cast is deft in articulating Wilde’s biting and whimsical, and often sardonic language.
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The play moves from the melodramatic to the comic as the scandal has the perfect politician, Sir Robert Chiltern (Jonathan Nichols) in danger of losing his position in the government and his social status when Mrs. Cheveley (Saren Nofs-Synder) blackmails him with a letter he sent years ago in his youth allowing him and an associate to profit from inside information about the building of the Suez Canal.
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Sir Robert turns to his friend the dandy social butterfly, Lord Goring (the brilliantly droll Bradford R. Lund) for advice and help. Goring adroitly offers many of Wilde’s biting and most unflattering thoughts on men, women, fashion, society, literature and government. These one-liners spiced the work nicely as Wilde’s clever plot renders how Victorian society looks at the way a man and a woman differ in how they love. Woman passionately idealize their men while men hide their human weaknesses from their women, according to Wilde. In a series of funny plot twists, Lord Goring (Wilde’s alter ego) maneuvers with apt guile saving his friend and landing a wife as this smart play unfolds. These hilarious scenes are played to the hilt.
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Terrific work from Bradford R. Lund as Goring was aided by Saren Nofs-Snyder’s Mrs. Cheveley, Jonathan Nichols’ Sir Robert and Denita Linnertz’s Gertrude Chiltern. The ensemble sported fine English accents and the glib drollness necessary in an Oscar Wilde play. The production values of the set design and costumes added authenticity to the stellar production. An Ideal Husband is one of the finest comedy’s Circle Theatre has mounted to date. Circle Theatre proves that non-Equity theatre companies can deliver lavish and intelligent productions of classic works. This show is a major achievement.
Highly Recommended
Tom Williams
Tom99@chicagocritic.com for comments
Talk Theatre in Chicago podcast
Date Reviewed: June 27, 2007
Jeff Recommended
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