Perth
Theatre
Four
stars
Don’t
be fooled by the Palm Court style pre-show music for Lu Kemp’s pared-down
production of Oscar Wilde’s cut-glass classic. The sounds get a whole lot
livelier by the end. As indeed do the goings on between Grant O’Rourke and
Daniel Cahill’s confirmed bachelors Algernon and Jack - or is it? - and the
objects of their affection, Gwendolen and Cecily, brought to posh-frocked life
by Caroline Deyga and Amy Kennedy.
A
whole lot of town and country planning goes into the dynamic duo’s respective
attempts at wooing, as they attempt to lead double lives in order to get their
way without being found out. Cecily and Gwendolen, meanwhile, bat out their
two-faced politesse through gritted teeth over afternoon tea. They’re not a
patch, however, on Lady Bracknell, magnificently embodied here by Karen Dunbar
as a fur coat and nae knickers upwardly mobile WAG, whose Kelvinside accent
only slips enough to reveal her roots on her revelatory handbag line.
Artifice
is everything in Wilde’s play, which Kemp and use as a serious virtue. As Jamie
Vartan’s increasingly uncluttered set moves from Algie’s booze-lined pad to
leafy English garden, the green screen at the back of the stage suggests
anything and everything can be projected onto the ensuing shenanigans. As all
bar Dunbar double up as assorted servants and guardians without any attempt to
disguise the quick changes afoot, it’s as if the two would-be couples were
dress-rehearsing an elaborate game of let’s pretend.
If
O’Rourke and Cahill embody the lackaday entitlement of bored toffs at play, their
female counterparts form a similar double act of opposites, with Deyga and Kennedy’s
Gwendolen and Cecily equally up for fun. As Lady Bracknell, Dunbar is a picture
of barely restrained joie de vivre. Judging by the show’s Crackerjack style
finale, given half the chance, she’d gladly let her hair down and go wild in
town, country and anywhere else that might have her.
The Herald, March 15th 2020
Ends
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