A revival of a lesser known Oscar Wilde play from 1891, Lord Arthur Savile's Crime played a week at Bath's Theatre Royal to allow the cast and production team a chance to hone the play before taking to London's West End. The Theatre has already performed a similar function for other plays in the past, notably Willy Russell's Blood Brothers and most recently Ibsen's Hedda Gabler.
Melodrama
Wilde's play is a melodrama; nowadays used as a term of disparagement, in the late Victorian era when Lord Arthur Savile's Crime was written, it was quite natural for audiences to accept both great sentimentality and histrionic acting, together with high and low comedy mixing in a way almost incomprehensible to modern sensibilities reared on specific genres.
In it's definitive use, the word 'melodrama' actually refers to a play with music, and one of the noteworthy features of this latest production is how much of a part violinist Anna McNicholas and pianist Matthew Wycliffe (who both sit at the side of the stage in full of the audience - and who occasionally interact with the latter) have in making dramatic points. Together with the scene-setting notes on a lectern at the other side of the stage, Wycliffe's piano counterpoints dramatic moments with a crashing crescendo. Indeed, it was at times a little too prominent...
Lord Arthur Savile
At the play's opening, Lord Arthur Savile is all but ready to marry Miss Sybil Merton. However, a meeting with palm-reader Septimus Podgers convinces him that he is in danger of murdering his sweetheart, and with Podgers' encouragement, he instead resolves to murder an elderly and rather eccentric maiden aunt.
Learning that his aunt died before she could eat the poisoned bon-bon he gave her, Lord Arthur then decides fulfil his destiny by disposing of his clergyman uncle using an exploding clock provided by incompetent German anarchist Herr Winkelkopf (played hilariously if as a stereotype by veteran actor Derren Nesbitt). This too fails and Lord Arthur is close to heartbreak before he finally resolves his problem.
Oscar Wilde
The denouement is obvious to the modern audience from the moment Lord Arthur encounters his problem, but the plot is secondary to the serious points that Wilde typically wove into his plays. 'We Always Kill the Things We Love' is a recurring motif, as is the difficulty of exercising free will, particularly given the possibility of predestination.
Lord Arthur Savile is played competently by Lee Mears, West End and reality television star (discovered in the BBC talent competition Any Dream Will Do) as does female lead Louisa Clein, while while West End veterans Kate O'Mara and Gary Wilmot provide solid support as Lady Windermere and the manipulative Podgers, exploiting his audience's credulity to the hilt.
Lord Arthur Savile's Crime will doubtless prosper when it reaches the West End.
Colin Harvey - Author six novels, and editor of four anthologies; professional reviewer since 2003, including six years at Strange Horizons. Member of ...
