It is a balmy evening in late spring, in the Master’s garden at University College. Candles star the flowerbeds, champagne sparkles into glasses, and the beautiful people of Oxford sit about like a court in exile from Czarist Russia. Between two fruit trees, the actors glide across the grass in extravagant period costumes, and the twilight is alive with the sounds of culture. The Way of the World has everything an Oxford garden play needs: a budget big enough to make Croesus’ eyes water, an idyllic setting, and a plot so intricate that not even the playwright really understood what was going on.
There is just the small matter of the acting. Congreve’s late ‘restoration’ comedy – actually written long after the Glorious Revolution – is a very demanding play to perform. Its language is patterned and immensely rich in irony and other precious metals, and the story is sufficiently elaborate to have fazed audiences in 1700, let alone today. To play The Way of the World properly, you need to know the precise value of every word and plot twist, and to make them come alive for the audience.
To give a grossly simplified summary of the plot, a young man called Mirabell is courting Millamant, but is pressing his suit on her aunt the Lady Wishfort to conceal his intentions. Mrs Marwood, who is in love with Mirabell, reveals his true intentions to Lady Wishfort. Lady W, in a fit of pique, declares that she hates Mirabell ‘more than a Quaker hates a parrot,’ and threatens to cut out half of Millamant’s inheritance if she marries her lover. Mirabell decides to force Lady W’s hand by marrying her to a fictitious uncle, ‘Sir Rowland,’ who is in reality his manservant Waitwell. Add to this the roguish Fainall, cuckolded by Mirabell and in love with Mrs M, and a supporting cast of assorted fops, and you have what Serj Tankian would call a ‘pyramid mindfuck.’
This cast have some way to go if they are to make all this convincing and watchable. Admirably, the producers have drafted in many students who have never acted before, but ten days before the play’s debut the new recruits had not been well drilled. Some of the actors cut quite a dash: Eleanor Lischka’s whimsical Lady Wishfort raises a smile and Tom Bradbury bustles about the stage as the blustery country squire Sir Willfull Witwoud. Others, however, seem to think that they are acting in The Importance of Being Earnest, and do not give their lines their proper emphasis. Much more imagination still needs to go into the characters, and the cast have yet to gel as a whole in spite of some commendable dialogues. One common fault is that the actors tend to speak the lines in the right tone without concentrating hard enough on the weight and meaning of the individual words.
In all fairness, however, the cast are rehearsing frantically, and with a bit more hard work and inspiration they could make something very beautiful here. I’d back them to pull it off. This will be a visually gorgeous production in a charming setting, and with any luck we will see a performance that lives up to its glamorous surroundings.
Verdict: a curate’s egg that could turn out sunny side up
