An Ideal Husband: wit and a thorny plot

OSCAR Wilde’s An Ideal Husband may be more than 100 years old, but some of the lines spoken by the politician at its centre, Sir Robert Chiltern, seem remarkably relevant today.

“The way he talks to his wife about politics, and not trying to come clean about his life, is full of spin in a way we recognise,” says director Rachel Kavanaugh.

“He talks about truth being a very complex thing, and politics as a complex business. This is an up-and-coming junior minister who later on gets offered a seat in the cabinet suggesting a possible way forward is to see the truth as a complex thing. It’s just one of the things in the play which the audience will recognise from our current political life.”

The play sees Jemma Redgrave’s Mrs Cheveley try to blackmail Robert Bathurst’s Chiltern over a financial indiscretion in his past, which saw him benefit from some insider trading. In return she wants Chiltern to support a dodgy scheme to build an Argentinean canal.

When Lady Chiltern, played by Laura Rogers, hears about her husband’s apparent change of heart in the scheme, without knowing the reasons why, she insists he must stand against the canal and remain her “ideal husband”.

Penned in 1893, and premiered in 1895 – the same year Wilde was later arrested for gross indecency – Kavanaugh says there are plenty of insights into the author’s state of mind within An Ideal Husband.

“There is an amazing moment in the play where Chiltern says he wants to live the truth, and what a relief it is to tell the truth,” she says. “If one knows what was happening in Wilde’s life at that time one can imagine that was what he was longing for.

“It was written by a writer who also had a big secret in his life.”

Kavanaugh was a former artistic director of Birmingham Repertory Theatre, working alongside Chichester’s Jonathan Church for part of her time there.

At Chichester she has previously directed Love Story, The Music Man and The Way Of The World. She was attracted to An Ideal Husband by its mix of darkness and light.

“I knew the play for a while, although I have never actually seen it staged,” says Kavanagh. “It is an amazing combination of Wilde’s wit, which we know from The Importance Of Being Earnest, but also a thorny plot of the politician with a secret in his past – a theme which never goes out of fashion.”

The period reflects a change in the way women interacted with politics. Obviously penned and set long before women won suffrage, it shows the female characters as being the power behind the throne.

Morality also plays a big role.

“There is a lot of discussion about the difference between a kind of perfect morality, and the morality which comes from the heart and through charity.

“Politicians today have built up their career on the moral high ground – and will still resign over public scandals.”

For her first production on the new Chichester Festival Theatre stage Kavanaugh has what she describes as “a most wonderful cast” headed up by theatrical legends Edward Fox and Patricia Routledge.

“Patricia is giving a master class in rehearsals of how this material should be delivered,” she says.

“It’s like doing a classical text. For a prose play it is extraordinarily rhythmic, with lots of alliteration. A lot of the rehearsals are about making sure all the actors understand the construction of the language and how to use it.

“There are lines in the play which are so funny we are laughing every time. We’re now at the point in rehearsals where you have to find the truth in the story – honouring the language and not trying to be funny.”