Wilde Kingdom

Once again, Le Moyne College is here to
reassure us. The company has a history of fastidious rehearsals,
maintained by director Steven Braddock, where every player musters a
defining body set and expressive delivery. Even in the unrewarding task
of playing a character three times one’s age, young actor Thomas
Babcock pastes on white sideburns, growls like a Victorian walrus as
Lord Caversham and hobbles an arthritic step. Everyone always
pronounces “girls” as “guls.” We soon forget there’s no one in the cast
old enough to remember the Reagan presidency.

Opening just a month before The Importance of Being Earnest, An Ideal Husband
is Wilde’s second-to-last play and the one with the most melodramatic
and convoluted plot. As the story turns on blackmail and hidden shame,
recent audiences have assumed that the play is at least partially
autobiographical because offstage the author was indeed heading toward
the imbroglio that would destroy him. The accused in this case, the
ideal husband of the title, Sir Robert Chiltern (Nick Barbato), really
is guilty of insider trading, a white-collar crime that these days
would not get you expelled from the club.

More certainly autobiographical is the
creation of the impudent idler, Lord Goring (Zach Chase), a master of
paradox—like the playwright—and the force that helps to resolve the
complicated plot. Goring dominates the action in the second act and
also enjoys the lion’s share of An Ideal Husband’s best lines.
Some samples: “When the gods wish to punish us, they answer our
prayers.” “I adore talking about nothing; it’s the one thing I know
something about.” “You see, Phipps {his servant}, fashion is what one
wears oneself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.” And,
“To love oneself is the beginning of a lifelong romance.”

Oscar winners: Kim Pompo and Nick Barbato in Le Moyne College’s An Ideal Husband.

Lanky and laid-back, like a young Jimmy
Stewart, Chase has been cast against type as Goring, especially as one
forelock has been allowed to fall on to his forehead. The director’s
choice appears to have been based on Chase’s facility at getting the
snap out of the lines. On the other hand, his absence of hauteur and
superciliousness, attendant to Lord Goring in other productions,
disarms the audience and prepares it for his unlikely romance with
Chiltern’s tart-tongued younger sister Mabel (Jenna Crofoot).

Sir Robert Chiltern is a rising member
of Parliament, living in fashionable Grosvenor Square. Happily married
to Gertrude (Kim Pompo), he is virtuous if humorous. He says, “I did
not sell myself for money; my success came a great price.” Tall,
gorgeous red-headed Mrs. Cheveley (Eileen Behan) knows that Chiltern’s
rise to power, as well as his fortune, grew from earlier shady
dealings. Although all the women are richly dressed with many costume
changes in splendor that approaches that found in Niagara-on-the-Lake’s
Shaw Festival, Mrs. Cheveley displays the most prominent and fetching
décolletage, telling us she is a temptress as well as a sleek predator.

Villains are always fun to play, and
villainesses are even better. As Behan’s Cheveley is perhaps a head
taller than Barbato’s Chiltern, the character seems to develop a
swagger, better-spoken and smarter than the run of the goody-goodies in
the action. As things work out the tension she creates gives An Ideal Husband more suspense than one expects from a Wilde comedy.

One of the aspects that must make An Ideal Husband
attractive to a college company is that it offers more than the usual
female roles, and most departments have a surplus of female talent.
They get their fair share of crackling good lines as well. Tops among
them is the loquacious Lady Markby (Fiona Barbour), kind of an
empty-headed parody of the peerless Lady Bracknell in The Importance of Being Earnest. Lady
Markby knows no secrets and does not advance the action, but her
blather dominates a long section of the action in the first act so that
her exit prompted a spontaneous ovation during opening night.

Strong in important supporting roles are
the Mutt-and-Jeff expositors of the first act, the Countess of Basildon
(Alisha Espinosa) and Mrs. Marchmont (Kristen Tornatore). They may only
be giving us backstory disguised as gossip, but their sparkling
delivery is a glass of champagne before the first course. Rewarding
also is the French accent of Brandon Clarke as the useful Vicomte from
the embassy.

Director Braddock makes his Book and Buskin directing
debut here, although he has long been affiliated with the program and
has been artistic director of the much-admired Gifford Family Theatre,
which performs at the Coyne Center in May when classes are over. His
most important ally is set and lighting designer Karel Blakeley, whose
ingenuity triumphs once again. Ornate furniture, a two-tiered faux
marble rotating set along with four scrims that serve as screens for
projected period artwork, all allow the impression of late Victorian
heaviness with speedy scene changes. Dialect coach Michael Barbour
assures that everyone speaks from the same social caste. Many of Lisa
A. Morrill’s sumptuous costumes may have been borrowed from Syracuse
Stage.

To bring us into Wilde’s milieu,
Braddock shapes with dozens of overt and subtle touches. Before the
curtain, late-arriving audience members are introduced by male servants
in the cast, so that kids in torn jeans and hoodies become “Sir Kevin”
or “Lord Smith.” And when Lord Goring proposes to Mabel, Braddock has
him throw down a white glove before pressing his knee to the floor.

This production runs through Saturday, Nov. 1. See Times Table for information.