Oscar Wilde pops up in Trinity as surely as Garden parties and Summer Eights. Yet despite this predictability there is always something cheering and enjoyable about it. So long as it is carried out with a good degree of enthusiasm and buoyancy, we lap it up like a good glass of Pimm’s.
Becky Threlfall’s Lady Windermere’s Fan, showing at the Keble O’Reilly in 7th week, meets these requirements with aplomb. From the opening scene we are plunged into a world wallowing in plummy accents and posh frocks; it’s hard to go wrong. Lady Windermere’s (Alexandra Hedges) veneer of class seeps with the anxiety of her crisis. Jamie Coreth’s Lord Darlington weaves through his treacly compliments and glides over Wilde’s aphorisms (which may sound jilted in less competent hands). ‘I can resist everything except temptation’ he smarms. Phoebe Thompson, as the Duchess of Berwick, raises the bar with terrific authority as she wryly stirs up rumour and scandal. All in everyone’s best interests of course.
The play is one of Wilde’s better creations, seething with dramatic irony. The value of truth takes a fair hammering as he sets up copious deceptions reaching towards an unpredictable and ultimately unresolved comic climax. Christine Taylor has no trouble in portraying the sultriness of the impossibly callous Mrs. Erlynne. Jaroslav Fowkes (Lord
Windermere) manages well the awkwardness of his hopeless situation bound by the competing obligations of kindliness, honesty and family.
The show falls shy of brilliance as some of the performances are uneven (though never distractingly so) and with a week or so to go there are some barely mentionable hiccoughs in the delivery of certain lines. But even so, as this likeable cast relax into their four day stint, this should become a smooth and effective rendition. If you can afford or need to unwind as term draws to its close, I think this should do the trick.
