The Provoked Wife, RSC Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon: trouble and strife...and a lot of laughter
Restoration comedy can be a hard sell for modern audiences. In the wrong hands, and with the wrong actors, a once-vibrant play is all too easily warped into a farcical period piece. The bewigged and be-rouged characters resemble nothing more than grotesque caricatures in thrall to shallow ideals. The sexual intrigue and immoral antics which titillated late-seventeenth-century playhouse-goers after the long drought of Puritan rule come across as either tame or tawdry. That rapier-sharp wit is blunted, that biting social satire rendered toothless.
The Provoked Wife by John Vanbrugh – playwright, architect, Whig radical, knight of the realm – is a comedy of manners which has stood the test of time thanks in large part to its perennial themes and evergreen concerns. Originally performed in 1697, this keenly observed and scabrously funny play revolves around marital disharmony and human folly, and highlights the dramatic lengths men and women go to get their way in matters of love. A brilliant new Royal Shakespeare Company production delivers riotous laughs while also serving up food for thought about gender divides and female oppression.
The eponymous spouse is Lady Brute. She married Sir John Brute for money, he married her for sex. Alexandra Gilbreath and Jonathan Slinger are perfectly cast as the mismatched pair – she compellingly virtuous yet mischievous, he convincingly repugnant. Lady Brute has never loved her drunken bully of a husband yet has always remained faithful to him. But now she has had enough of his “barbarous usage”. If she can’t extricate herself from her miserable marriage of inconvenience then she will consider adultery. “Virtue’s an ass,” she declares, “and a gallant’s worth forty on’t.” Enter one gallant, Constant (dashingly played by Rufus Hound), who has loved Lady Brute since the day he attended her ill-fated wedding. This secret suitor appeals to his friend Heartfree, a committed bachelor who, like Benedick in Much Ado About Nothing , claims to have no truck with love – that is until he falls for Lady Brute’s sprightly niece Bellinda. Natalie Dew gives an assured performance as a young ingénue making sense of her emotions. John Hodgkinson dazzles as Heartfree, flitting dexterously from marriage-averse to head-over-heels.
Vanbrugh creates further mayhem by adding to the mix the over-the-top and larger-than-life Lady Fancyfull (winningly portrayed by Caroline Quentin). As with Vanbrugh’s other deluded narcissist Lord Foppington in his earlier play The Relapse , Lady Fancyfull is both a figure of fun and an object of ridicule. Puffed-up in flamboyant finery and attended by her impish French maid (a beguiling Sarah Twomey), she sets out to “new-mould” Heartfree, but turns into a woman scorned and hell-bent on revenge after discovering he has set his sights on Bellinda. Cue scheming, backbiting, illicit trysts, power struggles, false accusations, and more than one bumpy fall from grace.
This production clocks in at over three hours yet doesn’t drag. Director Phillip Breen keeps things ticking along with pace and verve. Mark Bailey’s costume designs are arresting; the singers and musicians are entrancing. There is a range of colourful settings, from Lady Fancyfull’s boudoir furnished with numerous standing mirrors to a tavern which is both a watering hole and a den of iniquity for Brute and his fellow rogues. Cast members take turns in the spotlight, often to exhibit their warts-and-all flaws or adept comic timing. That humour comes thick and fast and rarely lets up. Wars of words and battles of wits are conducted by way of pithy exchanges. Several actors break through the fourth wall to nudge and wink at their enraptured audience. Hound imparts droll maxims (“matrimony is like an army going to engage”), Quentin doles out acerbic put-downs, and Singer has a ball as “a woman of quality” in Lady Brute’s yellow frock. (Hats off here to Breen for staging one of Vanbrugh’s revised scenes: in the original scene Brute secures fewer laughs by dressing up in a clergyman’s gown.)
The RSC have called this play a “Restoration romp”. However, this term doesn’t apply throughout. We are transported from merriment to horror in a scene in which Brute lives up to his name and attempts to rape his wife. Also, the play’s denouement sets it apart from other Restoration comedies, romps or otherwise: rather than a cathartic conclusion with all loose ends tied up we are left with some unresolved issues and relationships. On the other hand, it isn’t entirely bad that The Provoked Wife sits oddly alongside other, more bawdy comedies of the period, such as William Wycherley’s The Country Wife (1675) or George Etherege’s The Man of Mode (1676), both uproarious capers about a rake’s progress with clear-cut final acts. Vanbrugh’s is more of a problem play, and its complexities make it all the more interesting. We may hold our breath and be hushed into terrified silence when Brute clambers on top of his wife, but we want to shout out and cheer when the women on stage address gender imbalance or mock male inadequacies. In actual fact, a cheer did go out, followed by a burst of applause, after Gilbreath proclaimed, with relish: “Let our weakness be what it will, mankind will still be weaker, and whilst there is a world, ’tis woman that will govern it.”
Gilbreath commands the stage and, despite stiff competition, steals the show. But ultimately everyone counts and leaves their mark. Breen and his team haven’t needed to dust this play down and spruce it up. It is as relevant today as it was when first performed, and still able to entertain, stimulate, and, yes, provoke.
The Provoked Wife is at the Swan Theatre, Stratford-upon-Avon, until September 7. For more information see here.
