Now it seems that the theatrical archeologists are attempting to disinter the reputation of the Victorian playwright, Arthur Wing Pinero. Following the production of the ecclesiastical horse racing farce Dandy Dick a few months back we now have Pinero’s melodrama of marital strife.
With nods both to Wilde’s epigrammatic wit and Ibsen’s portrayal of independent-minded women in a male-dominated society, Pinero’s play slides subtly from comedy to tragedy. When widower Aubrey Tanqueray (James Wilby) marries Paula (Laura Michelle Kelly), his friends are stirred and more than a little shaken.
It is not so much that Paula is barely older than his daughter, Ellean (Rona Morison), but that she has a shadowy history. She is, in the parlance, a woman with a past. And like many dramatic pasts, it returns to haunt her with fatal results. She is a Frankenstein creature, constructed of leftover parts of Hedda Gabler and Wilde’s Mrs Cheveley.
On an elegant set of candelit mahogany, Stephen Unwin’s sturdy production makes much of Pinero’s engrossing play. There is a genuine sense of male camaraderie in the opening scenes that is waiting to be dismantled by the announcement of Aubrey’s impending marriage. It is not men (suggests Pinero) but women who supervise the social guillotine that severs the ties of friendship. If the first Mrs Tanqueray was “all marble arms and black velvet” the second Mrs T is a spirited, petulant woman who sees her marriage as an opportunity to bury her disreputable reputation.
As played by Michelle Kelly, she is a flibbertigibbet struggling with the straitjacket of respectability. It is a big step from Mary Poppins and she doesn’t quite make it.
Too inexperienced an actress to play a woman of experience, she is more of a gabbler than a Gabler, though she has an undeniable presence.
James Wilby, who has made a career out of playing decent, bewildered, uptight Englishmen was born to play a role like Aubrey and pitches his performance perfectly, bringing great credibility to his injured pride and tormented love for both his new wife and his daughter.
If Unwin rushes the denouement, there is a wonderful face-off between Paula and Ellean when daughter confronts stepmother with the killer put-down: “I’ve always known…what you were.” A little more depth and weight at the centre and this could evolve into a fine production of a play well worth resurrecting.
Source: The Express / Neil Norman / 11 October 2012
