Last weekend I had the wonderful blessing of getting to
visit my sister at college. She is
a theatre major at Azusa Pacific University, and was stage managing one of the
shows for the department this semester.
That show was Oscar Wilde’s comedic play An Ideal Husband. I was
able to see the show multiple times while I was down to visit for the weekend,
and I can honestly say, it was the highlight of my autumn, so I have decided to
dedicate this post to all things Ideal Husband, beginning with a summary of the show (for those of
you who, like me two weeks ago, had never heard of the play), following with a
review of the APU show, and ending with a bit of a feminist analysis. So sit back, curl up with a cat, a cup
of tea, and a copy of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband, and enjoy.
After I got home, I was trying to summarize An Ideal
Husband for a friend, and the process took
me a half an hour, so bear with me as I try to reduce the brilliance of a three
hour performance to a couple of paragraphs.
The story is set in the late Victorian period, and follows
the three day history of Sir Robert Chiltern and his wife, Lady Gertrude
Chiltern. Sir Robert is a member
of the house of Commons and a rising star in the political arena, renowned for
his upstanding character. One
evening, during a society party, Sir Robert is confronted by Mrs. Cheveley, a
woman of questionable reputation and nefarious intent, who blackmails Sir
Robert for his support in an unscrupulous political scheme. Mrs. Cheveley reveals that she has a
letter that Sir Robert wrote when he was young, selling a government secret to
a stock investor, an action that was the root of his immense fortune. Sir Robert reluctantly agrees to help
Mrs. Cheveley, however, his wife, a woman of upstanding moral character, not
knowing the dark secret of her husband’s past, forces him to withdraw his
consent. Sir Robert, not knowing
how best to proceed, explains the entire situation to his best friend, Lord
Arthur Goring, an apparently shallow society dandy who actually has unexpected
depths of insight and intelligence.
Lord Goring tries to convince Robert to tell his wife the whole truth,
but Robert is convinced that his wife will never be able to except his past
disgrace. Lord Goring asks
Robert’s permission to at least talk to Lady Chiltern and see how she might
react to the news. In this
conversation, Lord Goring is unable to convince Lady Chiltern that her husband
could ever commit a wicked or misguided action, or that past vices may be
forgiven by present virtues, and understanding that Lady Chiltern will
eventually have to learn of her husband’s past, Lord Goring informs her that if
she should ever want his help she could trust him come to him immediately. After Lord Goring leaves, Lady Chiltern
is visited by Mrs. Markby (a woman renowned for her ability to talk more and
say less than anyone), and Mrs. Cheveley, who has come to inquire about a
diamond and snake brooch she has lost the night before. The broach had been found by Mabel
Chilton (Sir Robert’s beautiful and thoroughly modern sister) and Lord Goring
in the previous scene, but neither had mentioned the incident to Sir Robert or
Lady Chilton. Lady Chilton asks to
speak to Mrs. Cheveley alone, and confronts her about her schemes. Mrs. Cheveley, in outrage at Gertrude
Chilton’s attacks on her character, vengefully informs Lady Chilton of her
husband’s tainted past. The first
act ends with Lady Chilton confronting her husband for his actions; informing
him that she had always held him up as a ideal, and he had disappointed
her. Sir Robert is broken over his
wife’s rejection, and angrily points out that no person is perfect, and that
wives who make ideals of their husbands are only a cause of suffering in the
world when men, because of their fallen nature, cannot live up to their wives
expectations.
The second act begins with Lord Goring receiving a letter
from Gertrude Chiltern, in which she informs them, “I want you, I trust you, I
am coming to you.” Lord Goring
realizes that she has discovered the entire truth and is coming to him for his
advice. As it is late in the
evening, he calls his butler to inform him that he will not be receiving anyone
except the lady that night. He is
interrupted by a visit from his father, Lord Caversham (or, in the case of the
APU version, Lady Caversham). Lord
Caversham informs Lord Goring that it is obligation to get married as soon as
possible. Flustered because of the
immanent visit of Gertrude Chiltern, Lord Goring convinces his father to have
this conversation in the smoking room, then informs the butler that when a lady
comes to call that evening that he should show her into the drawing room. Lord Goring and Lord Caversham go to
the smoking room, then the doorbell rings. The butler answers, and shows Mrs. Cheveley into the
room. He informs her that Lord
Goring was expecting her, and shows her into the drawing room. While the lamps are being lit, Mrs.
Cheveley snoops around the study and discovers lady Chiltern’s letter to Lord
Goring, however, the butler returns before she is able to do more than read
it. Lord Goring and Lord Caversham
come back into the study, and Lord Goring offers to show his father out. Unfortunately, he meets Sir Robert
Chiltern in the hallway, and is forced to invite him in. Sir Robert is uncertain what he should
do now that his wife has found out the truth, and Lord Goring is anxious
because he thinks that Lady Chiltern is waiting in the drawing room. As Sir Robert begins to outline what he
plans to do about the Argentine Canal scheme, a chair falls in the drawing
room. Angry that someone has been
listening in on their conversation, Sir Robert asks Lord Goring who was
listening. Lord Goring, still
unaware that it is Mrs. Cheveley and not Lady Chiltern in the drawing room,
tries to keep Sir Robert from seeing who it is. Robert barges into the drawing room and sees Mrs.
Cheveley. Lord Goring tries to
explain (still thinking that it is Lady Chiltern), that she came to help him,
and that she is utterly blameless in the affair. Sir Robert is affronted by the fact that Lord Goring is
defending his enemy, and leaves in a huff. Mrs. Cheveley finally emerges from the drawing room, and
Lord Goring recognizes what has happened.
Mrs. Cheveley informs Lord Goring that she has come to make him an
offer. She will give him Robert
Chiltern’s letter, which is the only evidence of his scandalous past, if Lord
Goring, with whom she had had a previous romance, was willing to marry
her. Lord Goring, whose heart had
been broken in the previous encounter, steadily refuses all her advances,
accusing Mrs. Cheveley of deliberately sabotaging Sir Robert and Lady
Chiltern’s relationship. Mrs.
Cheveley feels unjustly accused by the insinuation, and informs Lord Goring
that she had gone to the Chilton’s house to inquire about the diamond snake
brooch that she had lost. Lord
Goring is elated to discover who had lost the brooch and pulls it out of a
drawer. He unwinds the snake
figure, and clasps it on Mrs. Cheveley’s arm as a bracelet. He then informs her that he had
recognized the brooch when he found it, because he had given the brooch as a
gift to his cousin, and that the brooch had been stolen. Mrs. Cheveley desperately tries to deny
the situation, but the bracelet will not come off, and she cannot find the
clasp. Lord Goring informs her
that he will not call the police and have her arrested for theft if she will
give him Robert Chiltern’s letter.
She reluctantly does so, then secretly steals Gertrude Chiltern’s letter
off his desk. He unclasps the
bracelet from her arm. As she is
about to leave, Mrs. Cheveley informs Lord Goring that she has stolen Gertrude
Chiltern’s “love letter” and that she intends to send it to Robert Chiltern
that he might know his wife was unfaithful. She escapes before Lord Goring can stop her.
The next morning, Lord Goring immediately goes to visit the
Chiltern’s to inform Gertrude that the letter was stolen. Gertrude has not yet come down, and
instead, Lord Goring finds himself accosted by first his father, who is still
pushing Lord Goring to get married, and by Mabel Chiltern, who is extremely
upset that Lord Goring had missed his appointment to ride with her in the park
that morning. In a momentary
impulse, Lord Goring proposes to Mabel, and she accepts delightedly. Lady Gertrude comes in at that point,
and Lord Goring informs her that Robert’s letter has been destroyed, but that
her letter has been stolen and Mrs. Cheveley proposes to send it to Robert so
that he might think she was having an affair. Gertrude is unwilling to tell her husband the truth, and
instead, tries to have the letter intercepted before it can reach him. It is too late, however, and Robert has
already seen the letter, however, since it was not addressed, he assumes the
letter is for him, joyfully reuniting with his wife. To please Lady Chiltern, Robert decides to give up public
life and his career in the Parliament.
At that moment, Lord Caversham comes in and informs Robert that the
Prime Minister has granted Robert a seat in his cabinet. Robert reluctantly refuses in order to
please his wife. Lord Goring takes
Gertrude aside and asks her why she is forcing her husband to sacrifice his
ambition for her. Gertrude tells
Robert to take the seat in the cabinet, and then Lord Goring asks Robert for
permission to marry Mabel. Robert
is at first reluctant because of his belief that Lord Goring still loves and
admires Mrs. Cheveley, a misunderstanding due to his discovery of her at Lord
Goring’s house the night before. Gertrude
Chiltern informs her husband that it was actually her that Lord Goring was
expecting, and that she had written him a letter asking for his help. With the entire truth known to all
parties, Robert finally agrees to let Lord Goring marry Mabel, an announcement
that is greeted with great joy by Lord Goring’s father.
That is the best summary I can hope to achieve. Please realize that the brilliance of
the play is in the sparkling dialog and in the interactions between the
characters, which no amount of summary can hope to justify. My only advice is to read, or better
yet, to watch the play. That is
the best way to experience the story and understand the comedy of the
situation.
Having summarized the play, I can come to my main
points. First, I shall address the
actual performance that I had the opportunity to see at APU. I always struggle in my reviews of
amateur shows because there is the constant tension between the magic of the
theatre, with the forced suspension of disbelief, and the quality of
performance, which can sometimes be an issue in amateur productions. Fortunately, I can offer little more
than complements to the cast and crew of An Ideal Husband on that score.
Stage, props, and costumes were put together with a great attention to
detail. I was lucky enough to get
to see one of the shows from backstage, and the amount of attention, the
precision of service offered by the entire crew was incredible. Every piece of furniture, every piece
of scenery, every prop was placed to maximize efficiency and performance. As for the performers, every single one
of them did a fantastic job. There
were a couple moments at the beginning of the show where the accents the actors
were using would come and go, but as soon as they got into their performance
the struggle went away and each individual became the character. Some standout performances included
Emily Dodson as Lady Caversham, Calli Mclellan as Lady Markby, Renna
Nightingale as Mrs. Cheveley, and Denver Danyla as Lord Arthur Goring. Ms. Dodson’s performance was both
humorous and heartfelt as she played Lord Goring’s politically motivated,
somewhat overbearing mother. Ms. McLellan was likewise hilarious as the
loquacious and frivolous Mrs. Markby; playing the part with utter abandon and a
great sense of the absurdity of “society” life. Her performance brought down the house for every show. Renna Nightingale brought an
interesting sense of innocence to the scheming Mrs. Cheveley in a nuanced
performance that revealed a hesitant, uncertain center to the manipulative,
ambitious woman. Particularly
moving was her performance in the third scene, where her interactions with
Denver Danyla’s Lord Goring walked the fine line between humor and drama, as
their take of former love and present ambition played itself out with a
brilliant poignancy. It was Mr.
Danyla’s portrayal that I found truly remarkable, however. He was able to balance the frivolity
inherent in Lord Goring’s character with a sense of insight and depth of
character. It was easy to imagine
the other characters in the play seeking him out for advice, while at the same
time conceding vices of vanity and self-interest.
Because An Ideal Husband
was such a small cast, I will take a couple more minutes to praise the rest of
the actors, because they all did such a fine job. Scott Kuiper did an excellent job as Sir Robert Chiltern,
particularly at the end of the second scene in his confrontation with Lady
Chiltern (played by the lovely Sarah Byrne), where his anguish at his wife’s
rejection is mirrored in her distress at her husband’s fall from virtue. Morgan Reynolds was eminently loveable
as Mabel Chiltern, and very deliberately played the character in a forward and
almost jealous manner that emphasized her modernity in contrast with the demure
manipulations of the other female characters. Francesca Fromang and Zenna Hodge played off each as both
servants and as upper class women attending the party in the first scene. Their sense of comedic timing was spot
on, and their interactions with each other and the surrounding characters was
used to great effect. Last, but
certainly not least, was Joseph Reyes in the dual roles of the Vicomte De
Nanjac and Phipps the butler. Mr.
Reyes seemed to enjoy himself immensely as the flirtatious Vicomte, but it was
in the role of Phipps here he was truly able to shine, bringing to the role the
dry humor and sense of absurdity that is so critical in the portrayal of the
British manservant.
In coming into the play, director
Erin Gaw attempted to emphasize the “joy that comes from being a real person
rather than an ideal.” This is a
theme that has particular importance in a Christian setting such as APU, where
students are expected to live according to a certain code of conduct and
maintain a certain façade in the face of their professors and peers. There is always a temptation to become
an image of respectability rather than living as a real person, and the cast of
An Ideal Husband did a fantastic job
demonstrating the value of seeing people as people rather then as symbols or
ideals. It is only when Gertrude
Chiltern recognizes her husband as a man; not an ideal of upright moral
character, nor a depraved villain tainted by a past secret, that she is able to
treat him well and love him without condition. In contrast, Robert’s love for Gertrude is still limited to
his ideal of her; he is so utterly convinced that she could never do something
wrong, that he is willing to sacrifice his own ambitions and desires because
she will admire him for it, and for this reason, continues to doubt her love
for him and reduce her affection to mere pity. This is contrasted to the relationship of Lord Goring and
Mabel Chiltern. Mabel’s affection
for Arthur Goring is based on a full understanding of him as a man; his faults,
his ambitions, and his virtues.
She knows that she cannot view him as an ideal husband, which leaves him
free to be whatever sort of man he wants to be, while she is determined not to
be an ideal for him, but to simply be a “real wife to him.” The greatest love is not found in
ignoring or denying the faults in another person as Robert and Gertrude
Chiltern do, but in acknowledging the other as a person, and treating them as
real, flawed, but beautiful individuals,
An ideal is set up to be selfishly worshiped, while true love is a
giving of oneself to another person without reservations.
The tendency to make an ideal of
another person lends itself to another theme in An Ideal Husband, that of the roles of men and women. In this aspect, An Ideal
Husband is very much a product of its time,
although certain portrayals can mitigate the negative vision of women. The men portrayed in the show are very
mixed characters. They each have
flaws and virtues; and it is only when the women are able to recognize both
aspects in their husbands that they are able to truly love them. The women, on the other hand, fall into
the classic Madonna/whore dichotomy: they are either perfectly virtuous or they
are utterly corrupt. From the
frivolous characters like Mrs. Marchmont and the Countess of Basildon to the
intelligent and manipulative Mrs. Cheveley, the villainous women are defined by
their disregard for their husbands and their flirtations. In stark contrast are the heroines of
the play; Gertrude Chiltern is lauded by her husband as being a woman of utter
perfection, and her only flaw is her expectation for her husband to be as
“virtuous” as she are. She need
only learn grace for her husband’s flaw to meet the “ideal” of a wife that
Oscar Wilde is setting up. Likewise,
Mabel Chiltern displays no obvious faults either: her vivacious personality
does not hide a deficiency of intelligence, nor is her assertion that she “has
no character left” off-putting to Lord/Lady Caversham, who is charmed at the
idea of having such a lovely lady as a daughter in law. Both Mabel and Gertrude represent the
ideal of a pure wife who utterly adores her husband despite his flaws. Lord Goring sums up this attitude
toward women, “If we men married the women we deserved, we should have a very
bad time of it.” The tendency to
place women upon a pedestal above the men they marry reduces them to a symbol,
not a real person at all. As this
ideal, the women are also called to sacrifice of themselves of the sake of
their husbands. Consider the final
act. Gertrude Chiltern is thrilled by the proposition of her husband retiring
from public life and the two of them moving to the country for a life of
seclusion with each other. Her
desires, however, must be s to her husband’s ambition because his love for her
would not survive the sacrifice of his ambition. Instead, Gertrude is required to sacrifice what she wants,
and is expected to rejoice in her husband’s success. While men should not be expected to make sacrifices to the
idol of their ideal wife, the woman, out of her virtue should be willing to
sacrifice herself on the altar of her husband’s ambition.
It is not just the portrayal of
women as either entirely corrupt or virtuous characters that is degrading to
the gender. The very dialog emphasizes
the relative lack of seriousness inherent to women, and the frivolity of female
conversation. Mrs. Cheveley,
arguably the most powerful female character in the play, demonstrates this
deficiency of dialog. In the third
act, Cheveley discusses with Lord Goring a proposition in which she will give
him Robert Chiltern’s letter in exchange for his hand in marriage. In what is presumably a “business”
conversation, however, romantic, Mrs. Cheveley is constantly being distracted
in her statement, bouncing from the conversation of the Irish to the size of
Gertrude Chiltern’s gloves, to the value of an English country house, and back
again. While Lord Goring
consistently brings the topic back to the pertinent issue, Mrs. Cheveley flits
through the conversation like a butterfly, landing for a brief moment before
flying on to something else. A
similar pattern is displayed in the second act, were the conversation of Lord
Goring and Sir Robert Chiltern is contrasted with that of his wife, Mrs.
Cheveley, and Lady Markby; the one utterly businesslike, confronting the issue
and driving the plot forward, while the other is marked by frivolous, if
humorous gossip and pointless chatter.
Indeed, Mrs. Cheveley comments on the situation, “Wonderful woman, Lady
Markby, isn’t she. Talks more and
says less than anybody I ever met.”
This is the consistent state of women in An Ideal Husband,
consistently talking and saying very little; dancing around the subject instead
of coming out and saying what they mean in a strictly honest fashion. This aspect of the dialog emphasizes
the distance between men and women, and places in the position of superior
moral character but inferior intelligence to the men in the story.
The production at APU was able to
offset some of these deficiencies in an unexpected way. Due to the shortage of men auditioning
for the show, they made the decision to change Lord Caversham to a female
role. This utterly changes the
position of women in the play.
Lord Caversham is a deeply political figure; a bit of an eccentric, but
eminently capable in the public realm; well informed and intelligent. By changing the part to be a woman, the
show gave a new voice to the female characters; here is a woman capable of
acting in a political way without the underhanded manipulation used by Mrs.
Cheveley, a lady capable of conversation without the gossip and frivolity
expected of the sex, a woman who swears, visits the prime minister, and is
perfectly honest about every person to whom she speaks. At the same time, Ms. Emily Dodson was
able to bring a decidedly female sense to the role: fussing over Lord Goring
and demanding a deciding voice in the matter of his romantic life. By the positioning of such a powerful
female character, the APU cast was able to present version of the play, that,
while still subject to the flaws of the text, was able to present a humorous
and insightful show that was not as negative toward women as it might have
been.
The presentation of An Ideal
Husband that APU put on was both thoroughly
enjoyable and thought provoking.
The portrayal of women in the original text was troubling, but was saved
in part by the decision to cast a Lady Caversham instead of a Lord. The entire cast did a phenomenal job,
and the result was a show of sparkling wit and deep emotion, a show that kept
me coming back for more, and inspired me to read more by Oscar Wilde. While every interpretation of the show
is going to be different, I certainly recommend finding and viewing An
Ideal Husband, and if you had the privilege,
as I did, to see the show at APU, I congratulate you. I look forward to seeing what this talented group of
students will do in the future, both at APU and in their individual careers.
