Wilde’s other classic

Press, 27 July 1988, Page 19

Wilde’s other classic

Stuart Devenie chose Oscar Wilde’s “An Ideal Husband” to direct for the Repertory Theatre because it has strong characters. “Wilde’s women are always very strong characters, usually with a past. They come into a structured society and disrupt it,” he says. “They take a very strong position which evokes a reaction from the audience.” But staging the play in 1988 Christchurch is quite different from presenting it in 1895 London, Devenie says. “The things that Victorian Londoners found shocking we don’t now and some of the things they would have found laudable in the play, we might find distasteful. “In the Christchurch production we have retained the setting and we have not altered the dialogue at all, but the characters are pitched differently from how they would have been in the original production. We are trying to find the resonances in the words and brings them through.” The wit that audiences know from Wilde’s “The Importance of Being Earnest” is evident in “An Ideal Husband,” Devenie says. "The wit is more mordant. Where ‘Earnest’ is satire ‘Husband’ goes straight for the jugular.” The cast for the play, which opens a week’s season on Saturday, August 6, numbers 16. The leads are Rozena Hallum as Lady Cheveley, Patsy Baldwin as Lady Chiltern, Chris Knight as Lord Goring, John Milligan as Sir Robert Chiltern, Robert Britten as Lord Caversham and Rebeccah McKinnen as Mabel Chiltern. Oscar Wilde is a playwright whose work Devenie knows well, having acted in “The Importance of Being Earnest.” “One or two of his favourite lines pop up again in ‘An Ideal Husband’ with slight variations. He obviously liked them and flung them about in more than one play.”