Imogen adds clout to the jilted wife
WATCHING Imogen Stubbs as an unhappy wife in a drama about middle-class divorce in Hampstead, it was hard not to recall her own, brutally public marital split from Sir Trevor Nunn a few years ago.
At one point in those proceedings, Sir Trevor went off gallivanting with Nancy Dell’Olio. We critics are meant to float above celebrity scuttlebutt, I readily concede. We should judge actors by their work and in this show Miss Stubbs acts powerfully and rather beautifully opposite the impeccable Henry Goodman.
But the stalls seats of the Park Theatre, North London, place you almost in touching distance of the performers. You can see every detail of their faces. That accentuates the personal.
Miss Stubbs’s character Honor is a former poet whose writing career has stalled during her 32- year marriage to George (Mr Goodman). Did she sacrifice professional acclaim to become a compliant wife?
Should she regret that? George is a public intellectual whose career as a newspaper columnist is in peril. George, old boy, it happens to us all eventually.
THE play opens with George being interviewed by a pushy young woman about great who thinkers. is writing This a book cold minx, Claudia (Katie Brayben), flatters George and he enjoys that.
Next we find Honor and George discussing a friend who has had a midlife crisis and left his long-standing wife.
They mock the man’s foolishness. But it is not long before George has had his lusts ignited by Claudia and he has left the blameless, gentle Honor.
He has ‘traded in a Bentley for a Fiesta’, silly clot.
Paul Robinson’s production of this wordy 1995 play is crisply done in the round with almost no props. The scenes are confrontational duologues.
Apart from Claudia, the one character we see is Sophie, twentysomething daughter of George and Honor. Sophie (done with poise by Natalie Simpson) is only a couple of years younger than Claudia and reacts with disgust at what her father has done. Some of the language is a bit bracing. Although this could be just another depressing tale of metropolitan betrayal — and how telling it is that they never once mention their weddings vows — the acting takes it to a higher level. Honor, initially dazed by George’s adultery, finally explodes with rage at the social indignity.
That was the moment I marvelled at the inner forces propelling Miss Stubbs. It is a performance, ginny-voiced, big-eyed, forlorn, that seems bruised by genuine sadness.
Mr Goodman — such a lively face, such a smooth voice — exposes George’s vanity, insecurity and his stupidity in thinking he can retain the affections of an ambitious raven like Claudia.
Only two things rang slightly untrue: Sophie’s failure to run to her mum and immediately give her an enormous hug when she hears that George has left; and George’s attraction to such a palpably acidic soul as Claudia.
The writing is not always as good as the acting, but this is a show to make you grateful for domestic familiarity.
Unlike George, many of us blokes actually find our fiftysomething wives a great deal more attractive and comforting than some svelte young vixen.