Post by mallardo on May 29, 2016 6:59:30 GMT
The mighty shadow of Ibsen hangs over The Philanderer, Bernard Shaw's early play about "the new woman" and gender equality and all that. Those who champion the cause are referred to as Ibsenites. Everyone on stage is a member of the Ibsen Club, which, uniquely, allows male and female members. But has anything really changed? The male members of the club bitch and moan about having to put up with all these women - and for the usual reasons. The title character, Leonard Charteris, goes on and on about how much he wants a woman to be like a man ( sound familiar?) in terms of her attitudes toward love and, yes, sex, but he doesn't really want that at all.
Ibsen's Nora, in A Doll's House, is put forward as the ideal but the heroine of this piece, Lucy Craven (wonderfully played by Dorothea Myer-Bennett) is, in fact, the anti-Nora, constantly reverting to what might be seen as feminine tricks of the trade; tears, emotional outbursts, flirtatiousness and a heavy reliance on her sexual appeal. When given a chance to fly solo, so to speak, she decisively turns it down. So, not for the first time, we have a Shaw play in which the characters say one thing but do something else altogether.
No doubt Shaw was a progressive thinker with what passed for scandalous ideas at the time. The Philanderer was written in 1893 but not performed in London until 1907, because of its subject matter, we are told. But, to be a proponent of liberal ideas is not necessarily to believe in their possibility. One feels that the man had a deeply conservative view of human nature and its ability to change - at least that's what comes through here.
And, oddly enough, it's this split-personality of the piece that makes it so entertaining and so funny. Struggling to align their instincts with their ideals, the characters are all at war with themselves - with the best of intentions. Shaw may have lacked his hero, Ibsen's, dramatic rigour but, as always, his sense of humour saves the day.
This is a fine little production at the Orange Tree - unsurprisingly so, it's the kind of thing they do best - well cast in the main, stylish, and with a great sense of fun about it. It's well worth the excursion on the District Line.
