In the great Oscar Wilde’s 1892 play LADY WINDEMERE’S FAN It is the day of lady Windemere’s twenty first birthday ball. She is presented with both a beautiful fan from her husband and a shocking suspicion generated by her friend the Duchess of Berwick that her husband is having an affair with a mysterious older woman, Mrs Erlynne.
After a series of adulterous rumours are unveiled, she discovers that her husband has been secretly siphoning large amounts of money into her account The Duchess tells Lady Windemere that Mrs Erlynne is a woman who has set the tongues of London’s elite wagging.
Next to Oscar’s ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’, this play is considered his finest comic work. The play includes some of Oscar’s wittiest barbs. There are great lines such as. ‘I can resist everything except temptation ‘.
Also as in ‘The Importance Of Being Earnest’ this play is intricately plotted. More than a few times during the play, characters are about to ‘come clean’ and a door opens, the truth is diverted, and the characters have to continue living the lie.
Jess Davis’ production. serves the play well. The heart of the play is satire and Wilde’s target is the superficiality, preciousness and judgmental nature of upper class society. All the drama that unfolds in the play results from Lord Windermere being unable to tell his wife that Mrs Erlynne is in fact her mother. That her mother did not die many years ago, she is very much alive. That her mother was a fallen woman who gave her up as a young girl to go off with a new lover, and is now determined to climb up the social ladder again.
One of Davis’ main touches in the play is to project quotations from etiquette books from the turn of the twentieth century, advising men and women how they should behave, onto the curtain between the play’s Acts. This was a clever device, though it has to be said, that the lettering wasn’t very bright, and the quotations were a bit difficult to read.
There was a mixture of performances in Davis’ large cast. Overall I thought the women gave stronger performances than the men who came across a bit stiff, something that can be the cast in period pieces.
My favourite performances were by Aimee Honor as the glamorous but naive Lady Windermere, Kendall Drury as the tense Lord Windermere, Liz Grindley as the gossipy albeit good natured Duchess of Berwick and Rod Stewart as the butler Parker, who announces every new visitor in a very officious way. Stewart is great in these quirky, minor roles, having seen him perform them a number of times. I thought that David M Bond could ‘pull back’ a little in his playing of Lord Augustus.
Tom Fahy’s set design worked well, and there were deft set changes behind the curtain in between the Acts.
Very experienced lighting designer Michael Schell’s lighting was very effective.
Peter Henson’s comprehensive costume design impressed and the costumes and looks of the characters transported us back to the turn of the 20th century London.
I am a big fan of Oscar Wilde’s plays. So good that the Genesian’s have included him in this year’s season of plays. I might yet trundle back to the Genesian’s to see the show again before it closes on Saturday 7th May. The Genesian Theatre is located at 420 Kent Street, city. Performance times are Fridays and Saturdays at 7.30pm and Sundays at 4.30pm. Running time 2 hours and 5 minutes. The production includes one 20 minute interval.
http://www.genesiantheatre.com.au
Featured image – Aimee Honor, Kendall Drury and David M Bond in ‘Lady Windermere’s Fan’ at the Genesian Theatre. Production photography by Craig O’Regan