Christine Kinlock as Lady Chiltern, Aparna Sri as Mrs. Cheveley, Tristan Poje as Lord Goring, and Michael Dunsworth as as Sir Robert Chiltern. Photo courtesy of The Colonial Players of Annapolis.
All theater-going society is acquainted with “The Importance of Being Earnest” by British wit and aesthete Oscar Wilde, perhaps the finest and funniest comedy of manners ever written. But fewer people know his other drawing-room comedies, “A Woman of No Importance,” “Lady Windemere’s Fan” and “An Ideal Husband,”—and that is scandalous. While the first two are somewhat melodramatic treatments of women of compromised virtue, “An Ideal Husband” (1895) is something far more sophisticated and timely—a musing on public and private ethics, political and personal scandal, and the price of success, all wrapped up in Wilde’s trademark sparkling wit and sumptuous satire of late Victorian society. Rather than revolving around missing parents and mistaken identities like his other plays, it presents a more grown-up plot about greed, ambition, and the cost of presenting a morally “ideal” façade. Shockingly, it also presents a scintillating and fascinating femme fatale, who makes life on her own terms, forcing everyone around her to bend to her will.
The Colonial Players’ production is perfectly precise…delightful…Jones’s pacing of the show is excellent…an ideal diversion.
The plot concerns Sir Robert Chiltern, an upstanding politician whose wife, Lady Chiltern, worships his public probity and private honor. Their charmed life is rudely interrupted by Mrs. Cheveley who knows that Chiltern originally made his fortune by selling state secrets for insider trading. She tries to blackmail him into supporting a fraudulent scheme he was set to oppose in Parliament to make her rich just as he was. Sir Robert is faced with the impossible choice of supporting a swindle to save his public reputation or opposing it to preserve his wife’s respect. All of this is surrounded by the traditional trappings and gorgeous fripperies of the upper-class twits of London high society, searching for love and savoring gossip while trading bons mots. Some of the quips are a little strained. Wilde has a penchant for paradox, and perhaps too often finds it amusing to take a common cliché and substitute a key word for its opposite. But whenever the aphorisms risk getting too acrobatic, the blackmail and political dilemma pull them back to earth. Whenever the moralizing verges on too morose, the verbal fizz elevates it again.
In a play where a character spends several pages musing that his boutonniere is not frivolous enough, it would be a crime to be cavalier about details. The Colonial Players’ production is perfectly precise in this regard. Dudley Whitney and Edd Miller’s set design takes the Players’ minimalist in-the-round playing space and makes it surprisingly evocative of several, opulent rooms in high-society London. The floor is painted beautifully (by Edd Miller, Connie Robinson and Lois Evans) in faux-marble and malachite, which also appears on some of the furniture. The one large playing entrance is flanked by rose-colored walls that sport reversible panels for different rooms. One pair is even modeled on the paintings of Gustav Klimt, a touch that is ahead of its time, artistically and literally (the play predates the painting by a decade), but is a good representation of cutting-edge aestheticism Wilde promoted. Other wallscapes are projected on the screens all around the theater, along with different lintels above the doors for different rooms.
The set changes choreographed by Lindsay Zetter are accomplished by stage crew dressed as Victorian servants, plus some of the cast. They are directed imperiously by one of the butlers, while photographs of Victorian street scenes and people move across the screens. At first it seems a bit awkward to have several of the society ladies of the play moving sofas and rugs, but they maintain their characters and lean into the absurdity. Their interactions with the butler make the interludes an amusing addition to the play, rather than a lengthy distraction from it.
Maggie Balacki and her stitching team’s costumes are lovely, as they must be in a play where appearance is practically the number one topic of conversation. The ball gowns in the first scene are slightly hard to place in the time period, but the ladies’ day dresses are spot-on. The men’s costumes are excellent too, including a three-button tweed suit with burgundy trim and a burgundy waistcoat on a dandy, and a coordinated smoking jacket on the politician.
This wonderful meticulousness is not confined to the theater, but continues in the lobby, where charming tablescapes of tea, writing implements, and letters accompany informational posters on the walls about the politics, manners and business of the period. There are even QR codes patrons can click on for more information about the production process, and “secret letters” they can open to be linked to a quiz about the show to win tickets to a future production. It is lovely to continue to be immersed in this richly researched world even during intermission.
Director Greg Jones brings this same care to the happenings onstage. He handles the tricky 360˚ blocking well, nearly always ensuring that everyone in the audience can see at least one actor’s face. He maintains properly posh accents, and makes sure the actors are moving equally exquisitely (one nice touch is that the gentlemen bow over the ladies’ hands, rather than kissing them, which would be improper). Jones’s pacing of the show is excellent, as is the flow from witticisms to threats to emotional outbursts. He also adds in some lively physical comedy and has a charming trick for highlighting important plot points by having a bell ding and a sudden, white light pick out the character making the key statement. Overall, very effective.
The cast is generally delightful. Nick Myers and Todd Smith, as the butler Mason and the valet Phipps, display appropriately Jeeves-like unflappability with just a hint of disdain. Vanessa Van Note and Alexis Mete as pseudo-sophisticated, society ladies, Mrs. Marchmont and Lady Basildon, ably maintain their aplomb while spouting the silliest of Wilde’s paradoxes. Edd Miller makes a quite amusing Lord Caversham, blustering and sputtering about the stage lamenting his good-for-nothing son. Sue Ann Staake makes a feast of one of Wilde’s classic unstoppable matrons, Lady Markby, tearing into her lengthy monologues with relish.
As for the principals, Sarah Wade aces the classic, Wilde arch ingenue, flirting by pretending not to and feigning annoyance at the clockwork regularity with which one of her admirers proposes to her. She is light as a feather without being silly, which is a feat unto itself.
Tristan Poje strikes all the right notes as Wilde’s stand-in, the foppish and frivolous Lord Goring. Pretending to care not a whit for anything serious, he ends up being the most useful character in the play. As befits the character, he does it all with impeccable style and charm.
Christine Kinlock does a capable job with the difficult role of the unbending Lady Chiltern. She manages not to be unlikable even when overwhelming her husband with the weight of her worship. Hers is the only character which undergoes major changes, and Kinlock handles all the evolving emotions gracefully, making them convincing.
Michael Dunsworth makes a fine Sir Robert Chiltern, the noble English gentleman with feet of clay, who suddenly sees his perfect, upright existence about to come crashing down around him. The distress at his dilemma is palpable and quite moving when his wife essentially bullies him into ruining their lives in the name of rectitude. Especially effective is his agonized explosion at the end of Act 1, when he vents his frustration and despair.
Then there is the villain of the whole piece, the cooly, evil woman with a past, the “genius during the day and beauty at night,” Mrs. Cheveley. Aparna Sri is a force of nature, or rather, a force of artifice in this role. From the moment she enters the ballroom in a scarlet gown and jewels, black hair balanced in an impossibly lofty Edwardian bouffant, and deceptively delicate, she dominates every scene she is in. She paces around like a panther, smiling knowingly one minute, pouncing the next. Sri takes a female character from an era when women were supposed to be the meek, moral, and subservient “Angels of the Home,” and makes her an army of one, battling an entire society for her own survival and satisfaction.
This is a play that, in some ways, partakes in the pervasive misogyny of the time, coupled with Wilde’s love of flirting with the outrageous (Lord Goring: “science cannot grapple with the problem of women?” Mrs. Cheveley: “Science cannot grapple with the irrational.”) So it is refreshing and almost revolutionary to see such a woman as Mrs. Cheveley.
“An Ideal Husband” is a timely political thriller about public reputation and private scandal, a love story, a moral meditation, and perhaps even a proto-feminist play, all enlivened by the elegance and comedy for which Oscar Wilde is best known. Go see this production. It is an ideal diversion.
Running Time: Two hours and 45 minutes, including one 15-minute intermission.
“An Ideal Husband” runs through September 27, 2025 at the Colonial Players of Annapolis, 108 East Street, Annapolis, MD 21401. Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays at 8 pm, Sundays at 2 pm. For more information and to purchase tickets, call the Box Office at 410-268-7373 option 2, email boxoffice@thecolonialplayers.org, or go online.
