Ideal weather for an outdoors performance
Posted on 26th August 2024
It’s a brave group that relies on the capricious weather of a British summer, but that’s exactly what Dot Productions do, performing in outdoor venues all over the country. This time last year the Corn Hall helped them stage Persuasion at The Oaksmere and it bucketed down – we ended up in a wedding marquee. This time the sun shone for us, brightening what was, in any case, a lively and spirited production. Braver still, it could be argued, was the decision to take on one of Oscar Wilde’s more challenging works. Such is the dodgy sexual politics of An Ideal Husband, it’s hard to know whether Wilde was satirising, or pandering to, attitudes of the day. I rather admired how the company played it straight when they could have so easily tipped their audience off with a knowing wink.
As scheming Laura Cheveley, Sarita Plowman vamped it up outrageously, while staying just the right side of pantomime – tellingly Wilde furnishes her with all the best lines. Sam Dunning offered up her opponent, stiff backed Member of Parliament Robert Chiltern, and was as morally vacuous as we’ve come to expect. Ciara Power, as Lady Chiltern, and Holly Baynes, as sister Mabel, drew shorter straws, the latter doing her best with a subplot that rather got in the way, not least as it seemed at odds with Viscount Goring’s sharp-witted manoeuvring. Winningly portrayed by Dom Thomson, one got the sense the actor was far more comfortable with the comedy of intrigue than the whimsy of romance.
An Ideal Husband is an uneven play that frequently trips itself up, but any faults on stage were in the text, not the performance. It’s a testament to the group that they held our attention in spite of those weaknesses, something that no amount of sunshine could have easily accomplished.