The Other Theatre Company have delivered us a treat in Plumley Village Hall with a musical version of Oscar Wilde’s classic. The music adds a new dimension to the well-known and well-loved play. It gives the characters an extra means of communicating with the audience - sometimes as solos, expressing their emotions and sometimes, more effectively, as duets, adding dynamic to the interactions between the actors. The cat-fight between the girls at the start of Act II was taken to a new level of bitterness and, at the other end of the spectrum, the love passages between the Rev Chausuble and Miss Prism were softened by being set to music. Ian and Caitlin Sherwood provided the musical accompaniment with their usual talent, flair and gusto. We are told that the cast had only had two weeks with the music but this really didn’t show, and the performers hit their notes with as much confidence and accuracy as if they’d been rehearsing for months.
Edward Lawton and Harry Sanger were totally convincing as the dissolute youthful aristocrats Jack and Algernon - they must have been practising at home. Wilde gives the female leads, Gwendolyn and Cecily, much more forceful personalities than the men, and Ceri Clarke and Annie Lamb did full justice to these. The part of Lady Bracknell is always a challenge, following in the footsteps of Edith Evans, Judi Dench, and other great names, but Harry Kennedy delivered a classic interpretation, delivering upper-class values and prejudice without compromise. David Richardson gave us a splendidly vague yet pedantic Chausuble, the epitome of all vicars (on stage, anyway) and Sarah Sherwood ’s Miss Prism metamorphosed convincingly from strict governess to beflustered ex-nurserymaid, under Lady Bracknell’s withering interrogation.
The set required complicated placing and arrangements of furniture and props between scenes, briskly and expertly done by the members of the cast and backstage crew, with Jon White, Joe Lloyd and Andrew Riley acting as the domestic servants (Wilde is a million miles from Downton Abbey.) Sophia Kennedy’s direction shaped the production and she clearly got the cast to deliver the results she wanted. This was a challenging and ambitious production to mount; its success and justification is shown by the full houses and the enthusiastic applause from the audience.
Review by Roger Barlow
For more information about this production, please see our Past Productions page for The Musical Importance of Being Earnest.