Lady Windermere’s Fan

Sale & Altrincham Messenger's Review

Patience is a virtue

If you're going to see Lady Windermere's Fan it is essential that you view the play in its historical context and don't try to view it through modern eyes. While our appetite for gossip remains as insatiable as ever, the actual events that set tongues wagging in Oscar Wilde's beautifully crafted piece wouldn't raise an eyebrow today. They say patience is a virtue and you will have good cause to feel very virtuous at the end of act one, because the pace is at the watching paint dry level.

Act two is much, much better, and it is when we discover the true identity of Mrs Erlynne, the woman who has been paid by Lord Windermere to do a disappearing act. The rumour mill is working over time and the chattering classes think Windermere is having an affair with Mrs Erlynne, a woman who gives the impression, to use a modern expression, that she's been around the block a few times. But the gossips are way off the mark and this strong character isn't the scarlet woman everyone thinks she is.

Altrincham Garrick has transported the play, first performed in the 1890s, to the 1930s, and it works brilliantly. The costumes are eye catching and have an elegant simplicity that's a real tribute to the magic fingers of Mike Shaw and his wardrobe team.

While this may be a play of two halves, there's no getting away from the fact that Wilde is a master craftsman who wrote some of the best lines in contemporary English literature and the famous line "We are all in the gutter, but some of us are looking at the stars" comes from this play. But the script is dotted with numerous gems, glowing with wisdom and full of bite. Wilde may have had a gargantuan intellect, but this, like most of his other plays, is relatively easy to follow.

Performances from the principal players - John Keen (Lord Windermere), Jennifer Wilson (Lady Windermere), Mark Butt (Lord Darlington) and Ros Greenwood (Mrs Erlynne) - are absolutely outstanding. Indeed, I can't recall a better performance from Ros, who cuts quite a presence as "the other woman" in his lordship's life.

Highly recommended - but be prepared to be patient and to listen.

Rick Bowen