Bawdy and broad

T H E A T R E   R E V I E W

DalTheatre’s 2010/11 season, “Through the Looking Glass”, has already invited audiences to adventure through suburban surrealism (The Bald Soprano and Jacques or Obedience), spelunk the grimmer side of fairy tales (Into the Woods), and hob-nob with high (and low) French society (The Madwoman of Chaillot) in pursuit of the truth which lies in absurdity.  Its last offering of the season—William Wycherly’s The Country Wife—is a bawdy tale of an innocent country girl’s introduction to the big bad city.

SEE PHOTOS: An innocent abroad

The play, which revolves around infidelity’s more undignified complications, follows Mrs. Margery Pinchwife (Katie Dorian) as she pursues cosmopolitan crush Mr. Horner (Ben Irvine). Mr. Horner has fed the local rumour mill a Machiavellian fib: that he returned from a trip to France missing body parts of an unseen but vital nature. His new status as poseur eunuch causes married friends to leave him alone with their “noble” wives. While Mr. Pinchwife (David Hung) attempts to prevent his wife Margery from embarrassing him in the fashion of a “noble” London wife, his fairly virtuous sister Alithea (a bright and unflappable Jamie Galbraith) attempts to decide which of her two suitors to wed, and which to be rid of. If all this sounds complicated, well, I admit it’s rather involved. It may help to think of the action as a theatrical game of Cat’s Cradle—each tangled situation results in another, until finally, suddenly, everything is resolved (and, although the entire cast is onstage, no one’s quite sure how it happened).

Much of this production of The Country Wife’s humour comes from its willingness to work with, and not against, an inarguably dated text. Theatrical “asides” — in which a character pauses the action onstage to address the audience—are played farcically and broadly. Cuckoldry jokes (even Mr. Horner’s name is probably a reference to the proverbial “cuckold’s horns”) are embraced for their antiquated humour rather than rushed through. And accents – posh, Cockney, and whatever the heck Margery’s is – are heavy, consistent, and polished.

An attention to Restoration detail is present everywhere in the production, from the program credits of characters nameless on stage (surely Bonnie Abramsky’s “Nell Quinn” is a reference to Restoration actress, and royal mistress, Nell Gwyn) to the extraordinarily detailed period costumes worn by the performers. I overheard one actress mention that the gowns weighed upwards of 45 pounds; certainly a difficult garment to bear continually, even if one does not consider that this production of The Country Wife ends with a spirited jig. It comes as no surprise that the costume team for this production consisted of more than 30 people.

Some of the humour of The Country Wife has not aged gracefully – domestic abuse doesn’t get many laughs in the modern theatre (thankfully) – but even where it occasionally flags as a comedy, The Country Wife succeeds as a historical document. The program even includes a glossary of Restoration slang to keep audiences from getting lost: in Margery’s world, “bubbled” means “tricked”, “fropish” means “fretful”, and “changeling” means “simpleton.”

Director James Dodding and assistant directors Joshua C. Law, Eric Saltsman, and Tessa Pekeles have put together an entertaining and amusing production – one which transports audiences not merely out of the theatre, but back in time.

The Country Wife runs until April 2 in the Sir James Dunn Theatre, and the wise theatregoer will not allow any fropish changeling to bubble them out of seeing the show.

Rebecca Schneidereit is a fourth-year student studying English, theatre and film studies.