Production did sparkling Oscar Wilde play justice

Press, 2 August 1989, Page 15

Production did sparkling Oscar Wilde play justice

» Oscar Wilde is justly for his epi---grams, aphorisms and and last Sun--day night’s "Mobil Master--piece Theatre: Lady Windermere’s Fan,” fizzed and sparkled with them. But as one of the great masters of comedy in English he is able to call on all kinds of techniques, .including a rock-solid del- - icacy in the exact placeament of words. - One of the funniest 'lines in “Lady ' Windermere’s Fan” is a description of a character as having made a lot of money “from the sale of meat in circular tins.” If you said that someone made money from the sale of meat in tins, that wouldn’t be funny: it is the word “circular” which makes us laugh. Not only is it funny but it also conveys disdain and a degree of bewilderment. It isn’t easy to say why the effect is achieved, but you don’t have to know why provided you know how to do it, and Wilde knew better than almost anybody.

The 8.8. C. production " looked splendid and the acting was appropriate to the excellence of the lines, with the exception

A.K. Grant

on television

of Kenneth Cranham as Lord Darlington. Not that he acted badly; he was just wrongly cast. He looked too tough, too nuggety, too much his own man. Lord Darlington should be a willowy cynic whose cynicism conceals the possibility of vulnerability. Stephanie Turner was all that Mrs Erlynne should be. In your reviewer’s opinion “Lady Windermere’s Fan” is Wilde’s best play, despite received opinion that that

honour should go to “The Importance of Being Earnest.” And the reason why I award the palm to “Lady Windermere’s Fan” is that Mrs Erynne is Wilde’s best-realised and most interesting character: a woman of courage and wit who transgresses against the rules of society and pays a heavy price for doing so. In fact, someone rather like Wilde himself.

“McCormick Country” has been widely and rightly praised as the first successful New Zealand talk show. It is also, by any standards, a rather unusual specimen of the breed, since it consists mainly of Gary relentlessly teasting his guests. This works well when the guests can dish it out as well as take it, as was the case a week or so ago when Sharon Crosbie and P. J. O’Rourke were more than capable of looking after themselves.

The approach can be limiting, however, if Gary gets too much on top of the vistors to his extraordinary set. Last Saturday Rosemary McLeod, one of the quickest-witted women in New Zealand, from whom I was execting great things, rather

drew into her shell under a relentless barrage of jokes from Gary about how much weight she had lost. Philip Leishman could tell he was being teased but clearly didn’t know what to do about it. And Gary was wasting his time trying to tease Buck Shelford: you can no more tease an All Black captain than you can tease the giant kauri in the Waipoua State Forest.

But the show is carried by Gary’s wit and verve and good humour. TVNZ should have been using him years ago. Publicity surrounding the show suggests that the set is a replica, or an attempt at a replica, of Gary’s own living room in Gisborne. In a few weeks’ time I am going on a debating tour with Gary which, not surprisingly, will take us to Gisborne, and I will be able to check out the real living room for myself. If the set is a reasonably accurate representation of reality I shall say nothing. But if there are substantial discrepancies between the real thing and its simulacrum I shall speak out publicly and fearlessly against the deception being practised upon an innocent and trusting public.