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A CurtainUp 
London Review
London ReviewThe Country Wife
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Marrying to increase love is like gambling to become rich.— Maid
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Fiona Glascott as Margery Pinchwife and David Haig as Pinchwife.
(Photo: Clare Park)
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Long a favourite of amateur theatrical productions and drama colleges I was surprised to find that this was Curtain Up's first review of Wycherley's classic comedy. The Country Wife deals with the problem of what happens when a gallant, or seducer of other men's wives, lands himself a pretty young wife from the shires. Pinchwife (David Haig) knows that all his old associates will target his Yorkshire bride (Fiona Glascott) and he may find himself cuckolded. Pinchwife's tactics involve initially hiding his wife, taking her to the theatre and sitting in the cheap seats so that he may pretend she is just a pretty prostitute and going to the fair with her disguised as a boy. A notorious womaniser, Horner (Toby Stephens) has devised a plot to allow him to be left alone with married women in what might be considered compromising situations. His ruse is to tell all that he has been left a eunuch after a trip to France and therefore women could not be in moral danger in his company. Three women, Lady Fidget (Patricia Hodge), Dainty Fidget (Lucy Tregear) and Mrs Squeamish (Liz Crowther) are more concerned with their reputation than their behaviour. Lady Fidget keeps telling us that they are "women of honour!". Horner too explains his eunuch pose will rid him of his current mistresses of whom he has tired. In a side plot, Pinchwife's sister Miss Alithea (Elisabeth Dermot Walsh) is to marry the rather stupid but rich, Sparkish (Jo Stone-Fewings) who cannot see that right under his nose, another gallant, Harcourt (John Hopkins) is duping him and determined to seduce the lovely and virtuous Alithea.
Paul Brown's designs are astonishing. I quite expected it to be in modern dress until Toby Stephens, who starts off in the altogether, put on a glorious electric blue brocade Regency coat (well maybe a little earlier than Regency). The wall papers are not of the period as wall papers but as fabrics and in vibrant colours with the motif blown up to ten times the usual size for a repeat pattern. It is all gloriously sumptuous and decadent. The women wear bodices and lavish skirts of gorgeous stiffened silks with modern shrugs but their wigs could be by Princess Anne's hairdresser. The effect is spectacular to look at and excitingly different.
The text too has seen some refreshing but uncredited updates. This comedy is explicit and sexually charged, full of bawdy and lewd innuendo for the quick witted or sexually aware to pick up. Prepare yourself for a line like, "He's coming into you the back way, Lady Fidgett!" This play was banned for 170 years until 1923 when it was revived. Even its title is a rude pun. In the late 1960s a reviewer remarked how The Country Wife no longer shocked as its morality was now too close to our own.
The handsome Toby Stephens is totally unconvincing as a eunuch as he swaggers and flashes that sexy smile at every gal in a skirt in sight and even at one dressed as a schoolboy. David Haig excels in his idiosyncratic delivery of his own confusion and in one meta-theatrical moment when he is in a quandary as to whether to believe his wife's explanation of compromising events, he turns slowly to the audience, his hand over his face in puzzlement and asks us, "What do you think?" I loved Fiona Glascott's pretty Yorkshire country girl, Margery Pinchwife, very overplayed with terrible tantrums in store for anyone denying her something she has set her heart on. Patricia Hodge is regal as the hypocritical Lady Fidgett. Elisabeth Dermot Walsh is sincere as Alithea and she deserves a more intelligent man that Stone Fewings' groaningly useless but very comic fop.
The serious points about sexual behaviour are few and far between but there is some discussion from the ladies as to why men prefer "to dine at common eating houses rather than at a quality house". Pinchwife says early on in the play, "A pox on it. I could never keep a whore to myself!" and "There's no beating women at their own game— lying." But in Wycherley's battle of the sexes, the only winners are the constant Alithea and her eventually sincere suitor Harcourt. Maybe everyone gets no more and no less than they deserve?
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THE COUNTRY WIFE
Written by William Wycherley Directed by Jonathan Kent Starring: Toby Stephens, Patricia Hodge, David Haig With: David Shaw-Parker, Timothy Bateson, Nicholas Day, Lucy Tregear, Liz Crowther, John Hopkins, Tristan Beint, Jo Stone-Fewings, Fiona Glascott, Elisabeth Dermot Walsh, Catherine Bailey, Janet Brown Design: Paul Brown Lighting: Mark Henderson Sound: Paul Groothuis Music: Steven Edis Running time: Two hours 45 minutes with one interval Box Office: 0870 400 0626 Booking to 12th January 2008 Reviewed by Lizzie Loveridge based on 9th October 2007 performance at the Theatre Royal. Haymarket, London SW1 (Tube: Piccadilly Circus) |
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