Stage review: A Woman Of No Importance, Greenwich

Shame. What a delightfully antiquated notion. Aside from the occasional MP who has its censures forced upon him, the emotion has mostly gone the way of Rhodesia, teapots and 78rpm.

Shame. For in the hands of a dramatist, worlds of hidden anguish and lifetimes of suppressed sorrow and bitten lips can be crowded onto its sharpened pinhead.

It is shame - the condition - that bustles off stage the dowager duchesses and hectored husbands of Oscar Wilde's drawing room staples and hands over the space to far darker - and compelling - notions of dishonour, atonement and morality.

Country houses, walks in the garden and scabrous gossip are shallow set against the towering consequences of misdeeds suddenly illuminated. It's like Wodehouse delivering a lecture at an organ donor seminar.

This is an ambitious production for such a compact studio space but the cast of 10 from Galleon Theatre Company - under the direction of Bruce Jamieson - mesh like cog teeth.

There are some gems among the cast. Rachel Arbuthnot (Mary Lincoln, pictured) has an air of skeletal fragility and seems to be composed entirely of haunted shadows. She bears the secret that tears apart this dignified gathering and quietly - and reluctantly - she infects proceedings with this very modern dilemma. It's like watching Technicolor bleed into a black and white Chaplin caper.

The recipient of her blistering truth is lothario Lord Illingworth (Kevin Marchant), a Bond villain with an impressive handle on the wordy Wilde script. While attempting to conquer his instinct for vanity and vileness, Illingworth still manages to marry pomposity and morality in that gymnastically upper class way.

Before life turns complex and grave he is matched in his flirtatious banter by the vivacious Mrs Allonby (Olivia Hill) who goes toe-to-toe with the lascivious lord with a suitably devilish glint in her eye, while Darrie Gardner gives Lady Caroline a broad brush with which to sweep up her acid drops.

Characters struggle to escape the shadow of their creator who cannot let a good epigram escape unrecorded. The sheer onslaught of witticisms and maxims would occupy a tea towel factory till doomsday and, while they are memorably quotable, they too often stand in the way of the story.

Indeed, Woman is acknowledged as one of Wilde's weaker works and the arrival of a plot late in the day comes as a welcome fillip.

There is a nominal attempt to update the 1893 play to the 1950s but Wilde is hopelessly, wonderfully, of his time and no amount of set dressing can drag him from his age.

However, he has such a briskly naughty take on the battle of the sexes that his wit and observation can easily survive the faddish prisms through which any so-called enlightened society may absorb the work.

This production is a hard-working wrangling of wanton Wilde, and the cast effectively herd the mood from light to dark with some moving performances. Certainly worth a visit.

– From December 2010