Society darlings are subtly skewered for play’s revival
THERE’S always been a knowingly subversive heart beyond the seemingly throwaway one-liners of Oscar Wilde’s most celebrated dissection of polite society.
There are hints of this during the opening of Richard Baron’s revival, when Gavin Swift’s work-shy fop Algernon comes to at the piano following an all-night bender. With tunes blaring from the Victrola, and complete strangers puffing on something dubious in the living room, in steps Reece Richardson’s lovesick Jack Worthing.
The boys duly indulge in some banter before Jack makes goo-goo eyes at Emma Odell’s deceptively coy Gwendolen on the blind side of Margaret Preece’s Lady Bracknell, a buttoned-up gold-digger who used to be a bit of a one. What follows, as Algie and Jack embark on an elaborate game of kiss-chase with Gwendolen, and Jack’s country-dwelling ward Cecily, seems to signify an entire class in search of some kind of identity beyond the numerous façades they flit between.
If keeping up appearances is everything here, the prospect of sex broods beneath every layer in a way that set a template for Made in Chelsea. There’s an archness to proceedings as Swift and co play interior monologues direct to the audience in a set of winning turns that capture Wilde’s recognition of his characters’ sheer ridiculousness.
In this way, the play winds up its world’s occupants with a gleeful abandon that cuts through the respectable veneer without them even realising it. If Wilde is guilty of anything, it’s of investing them with more intelligence than they deserve in this timelessly ribald exploration of the unbearable lightness of being. THE fact that the capital had served up a gloriously blue yet freezing cold evening was something that was not lost on Lionel Richie.
“I was under the impression,” he told the crowd, “this was a summer concert – I was freezing back there.” Why he should think such a thing on a late July evening in Edinburgh was anybody’s guess, but, to his credit, he spent the following 90 minutes doing his best to bring the five thousand or so fans squeezed into the castle esplanade to fever pitch.
Richie has been doing this for a fair while. He divided his fans into three groups. The first had loved the Commodores. The second had discovered him as a solo artist and the third had found his records in their parents’ collections. He satisfied all three groups in a show that unashamedly concentrated on the hits.
Kicking off with Running With the Night, his super slick band hardly put a foot wrong, although Penny Lover suffered from a harmonica part that belonged to a different key at the very least. Perhaps the cold was at fault. That aside, the hits just kept coming.
Commodores tunes such as Sunday Morning, Sail On and the effortlessly funky Brick House were received with as much acclaim as Stuck on You, Say You, Say Me, Dancing on the Ceiling and set closer All Night Long. He does schmaltz like no other, as evidenced by the communal descent into a romantic trance triggered by Three Times a Lady and the iconic Hello. His encore featured We Are the World, which brought in children from the Edinburgh Playhouse Choir.