An Ideal Husband

Jericho Arts Centre to June 22, 2025

Tickets: Adults $35, seniors $30, students with ID $15. Available at 604-224-8007 or www.unitedplayers.com 

Posted May 31, 2025

Treat yourself. Go and see this show before it sells out. Playwright Oscar Wilde would have loved this production: elegant, classy, handsome and pretty at the same time, saucy and a little bit sexy, featuring some serious gender-bending. The main character, Lord Goring, is played by Hayley Sullivan, a young woman who absolutely nails it with a performance that is witty and physical in a way that I have not seen before. Her timing is flawless, her physicality great fun to watch. Two and a half hours fly by.

United Players, under the inspired and hard-working artistic direction of Sarah Rodgers, closes its 2024-2025 season with An Ideal Husband which, despite having been penned in 1895, is astonishingly relevant today especially in its conversations about money and power. “Power over other men; power over the world. Only the rich possess it”, says Mrs. Cheveley to Sir Robert Chiltern. Perhaps as never before we are seeing this south of the border: the obscenely rich wielding all the power at the expense of the not-ever-going-to-be-rich.

The plot is tricky and you need to keep your wits about you. But even if you lag – generally because you are still enjoying some witticism – like “unfashionable” being “what other people wear” and dozens and dozens of other equally witty bon mots – it all makes sense in the end.

Sir Robert Chiltern has a dreadful secret, unknown to his wife Gertrude who loves him dearly but who holds him to a standard of integrity that is almost impossible to meet. Recently returned from Vienna to London, Mrs. Cheveley, a divorcee, knows about Sir Robert’s misdeed and attempts to blackmail him into changing his position on the building of a canal in Argentina. He has been public in his arguments against the project but Mrs. Cheveley will be made bankrupt if it doesn’t go ahead. She needs Sir Robert to support the project in the House of Commons and she threatens to reveal his secret if he doesn’t.

There are secret letters, conversations overheard from the drawing room, hints of infidelity, flirtations between the young social set including Mabel Chiltern, Sir Robert’s sister, and Goring. As Mabel, Kyla Ward almost vibrates: she’s bouncy and sassy and her character is, in many respects, at the heart of the play. Unlike Gertrude who demands the highest moral standing in her husband, Mabel’s ideal husband, “can be what he wants to be.”

Emma Newton’s portrayal of Gertrude is appropriately prim and proper to the point of tedious but throughout the course of events there is a reversal and Newton makes Gertrude, finally, sweetly human.

As Sir Robert, Chris Cope is initially solid, stuffy and decent but as the plot thickens, Cope takes Sir Robert through a broad range of emotions: self-satisfaction, fear, anger and despair. There is something very touching when Sir Robert asks Gertrude about her oft-proclaimed love for him, “Is it love or is it pity?” It’s sweet, a bit smarmy and perhaps had Wilde written this today, he might have ended the play with the scene between Mabel and Goring. Most of us like a happy ending but the best of those happily-ever-after endings come with a dash of wry or uncertainty, a hint of the turbulence that’s bound to come.

Lady Markby is played by Nancy Henderson and Lord Caversham by Gordon Law. Between them they offer a wry, older perspective on the younger generation.

Tall and imposing, Cat Smith is Mrs. Cheveley, the villainess, the kind of nasty person for whom you have a grudging admiration. She’s wily and cunning, knows what she wants and how to get it. Smith dominates the stage when she’s on it; she’s powerful, controlled and exudes a kind of sinister sexuality that, should it be to her advantage, she can unleash it. Gowns designed by Madeleine Polak put Smith over the top: gorgeous satins with lots of bare flesh, sparkly jewels and decolletage. Red hair pile high. A determined walk. Attitude.

All Polak’s costumes are gorgeous ranging from pale blue on Gertrude to sunshiny yellow on Mabel. Most of the men are formally dressed in suits and tails except for Goring who, in every respect, defies the norm. In big, loose, blousy shirts, this Lord Goring is flamboyant and androgenous. He is, in short, Oscar Wilde.

Omanie Elias’s set is a one-set-fits-all, elegant, flexible and easily moved which is accomplished by the ensemble – especially leggy choreographer Jerry Burchill who dances set pieces on and off. How often do set changes warrant applause? Five white columns represent the Chiltern interior but when reversed become the book-lined study of Lord Goring. Lighting design is by Rebekah Johnson.

Sound design – including violin by Thule van den Dam – is evocative and romantic. On opening night, Chris Robson played Chopin waltzes and preludes on the grand piano; the music and the lush, almost erotic floral paintings by Lauren Morris lining the lobby walls, set us up for a truly Wildean experience.

Directed by Moya O’Connell with Amber Lewis, Wilde would have been wild about this production. Set in the late 19^th century in London, the United Players production has ‘Art’ written all over it. He would have loved the set, the lighting and the music. He would have applauded as did we the opening scene with all the masked players in a stylized dance. After all those years he spent in the Reading jail for homosexuality, I expect he would be thrilled to see cross-dressing and gender fluid casting. He might even have written the role of Lord Goring for a woman if he thought he could get away with it.

An Ideal Husband will sell out. If you plan to go, get tickets soon. Parking is now almost all paid parking; even the residential areas are filling up with beach traffic.

Because the wit comes thicker and faster than my pen and notebook could keep up, I offer a few quotes from the play gleaned from the internet:

“Ah, I forgot, your husband is an exception. Mine is the general rule, and nothing ages a woman so rapidly as having married the general rule.”

“Morality is simply the attitude we adopt towards people whom we personally dislike.”

“Ah, nowadays people marry as often as they can, don’t they? It is most fashionable.”

“Men always look so silly when they are being caught. And they are always being caught.”

“It is not the perfect, but the imperfect, who have need of love.”

“Sooner or later in political life one has to compromise. Every one does.”