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The Theatreguide.London Review
In March 2020 the covid-19 epidemic
forced the closure of all British theatres. Some companies adapted
by putting archive recordings of past productions online, others
by streaming new shows. And we take the opportunity to explore
other vintage productions preserved online. Until things return to
normal we review the experience of watching live theatre onscreen.
Being
Mr Wickham
Original
Theatre Online Spring 2022
A
one-hour monologue play by Adrian Lukis and Catherine Curzon, here
performed by Lukis, Being Mr Wickham belongs to the familiar genre of
the literary classic as seen by a minor character.
The
prime example of the mode is, of course, Stoppard's Rosencrantz And
Guildenstern Are Dead, but it also includes such solo shows as Tim
Crouch's I Cinna The Poet, which we reviewed earlier this year.
Turning
a familiar work inside-out can illuminate, alter or parody it. In this
case it really doesn't do much of any of those things.
A
quick reminder for those whose memory of Pride And Prejudice may have
faded: Wickham is a dashing young military officer who impresses heroine
Elizabeth Bennet, so that his warnings about fellow officer Darcy shape
her prejudice against him.
Ultimately
Wickham is exposed as the villain (in part through seducing Elizabeth's
sister Lydia), everything he said against Darcy is refuted, and Darcy
emerges as the hero (in part by making Wickham marry Lydia and providing
them an income out of his own fortune).
Lukis
and Curzon's first (and just about only) re-imagining of the story is to
present Wickham, now 60, as an amiable and generally contented man.
He
and Lydia proved well matched in their shallowness and enjoyment of
simple pleasures, their marriage has been a happy one, and if he has any
bitter memories they are all of his pre-Austen youth.
(Austen
herself, in imagining Wickham's early life as poor dependant in the rich
Darcy family, probably drew on Fielding's Tom Jones; Lukis and Curzon
dip into Dickens's Nicholas Nickleby for the nightmare school Wickham
here remembers being sent to while Darcy was luxuriating at Eton.)
The
playwrights
offer very little more in the form of footnotes or gloss on Pride And
Prejudice beyond the mild surprise of Wickham's general contentment. It
certainly takes no stretch of imagination to picture the younger Darcy
as a bit of a prig and Goody Two-Shoes;
Wickham
has nothing to add to Austen's picture of the other characters, and he
doesn't even mention (and does little more than mention) Elizabeth until
three-quarters of the way through.
What
we get, then, is not a re-imagining of Austen but an almost generic
Garrulous Old Coot, the kind you might encounter in any pub, mildly
amusing for a while but ultimately a bore you seek for ways to escape.
As
a performer Adrian Lukis uses all his skill and considerable personal
charm to disguise how very little he and Curzon as writers gave him to
work with. But you are likely to come away from Being Mr Wickham vaguely
disappointed that there was less there than you anticipated.
As with all Original Theatre videos, the recording is polished and professional, though staging it in a vacant theatre, with the empty auditorium frequently in shot and the furnishing obvious stage sets, seems an irrelevant director's invention imposed on the material.
Gerald Berkowitz
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