Jennifer Saunders is ab fab, but the show lacks Wildeness
Lady Windermere’s Fan Vaudeville Theatre ★★★☆☆
The presence of Jennifer Saunders, treading the boards in the West End for the first time in 25 years, lends immense curiosity value and commercial clout to Kathy Burke’s revival of Oscar Wilde’s 1892 breakthrough social comedy. But beyond showcasing Saunders’s sublime deadpan gifts, this restrained, fitfully entertaining evening left me wondering when the subversive streak that should run through this year-long celebration of the immortal Irish genius is going to manifest itself.
Saunders steals the show in the minor but pivotal role of the Duchess of Berwick. This proto-lady Bracknell first sweeps into view – a touch of the panto dames about her voluminous, feather-topped attire – to divulge a shattering bit of tittletattle to the mistress of the house, Lady Windermere, who is in the middle of preparations for her birthday party. The latter’s young husband has been seen frequenting the house of one Mrs Erlynne, setting tongues wagging: “Many a woman has a past but I am told that she has at least a dozen, and they all fit,” the Duchess crows.
As Saunders’s gorgon shoos away her daughter the better to impart her gossip, you get pleasing reminders of Edina’s high-handedness towards Saffy in Absolutely Fabulous. And, in general, her performance would not look out of place in a French and Saunders send-up or a Comic Relief sketch, not least when she gamely – and fairly frightfully – warbles a specially penned entr’acte ditty. She is all mannerism – rolling her eyes, letting her lines escape through barely opened lips, moving her head as if it were wedged in an invisible neckbrace – but it works a treat.
When the play was last in the West End in 2002, Vanessa Redgrave and her daughter Joely Richardson took on the roles of Mrs Erlynne and Lady Windermere, a casting coup that gave notice of the gradually revealed relation between the women. The dramatic thrust is that this salient, potentially shaming piece of information is kept a closely (nay contrivedly) guarded secret between the manipulative Mrs E and a misunderstood Lord Windermere.
This production only intermittently locates any memorable gritty emotion beneath the glittery bons mots, though. Samantha Spiro’s Mrs Erlynne exudes a bright, feline sense of mischief, but I wanted to see sharper
‘Her performance would not look out of place in a French and Saunders send-up or a Comic Relief sketch’
claws, more alley-cat desperation. I was impressed, too, by Grace Molony’s vulnerable Lady Windermere but often couldn’t see the modern woman for the fusty melodrama. And as her well-meaning but controlling husband, Joshua James succumbs to a tendency, noticeable elsewhere in the cast, of going shrill when understatement would do.
It’s serviceable enough as a fun night out, then, and fans of Saunders would be mad to miss it. But I’d prefer a production which, to borrow a line from the play, more keenly reminded us we are all in the gutter even as it tantalised us with its star. Until April 7. Tickets: 0330 333 4814; classicspring.co.uk