BBC Radio 7, 13 December 2010
Another tale of innocence transmuted into experience through melodrama.
Mrs. Erlynne (Penelope Keith) turned out to a blackmailer but operating for the best intentions, as she ends up trying to
prevent her illegitimate daughter Lady Darlington (Joely Richardson) from committing the same folly that Mrs. Erlynne herself
committed two decades previously - abandoning her husband and condemning herself to a life of perpetual isolation. The story
has the same feel as An Ideal Husband, focusing on the importance of tolerance in marriage while satirizing the English
aristocracy for their hypocrisies, particularly where manners are concerned.
In David Johnson's production Lady Windermere's Fan critiqued late
Victorian rationalism, that presupposed that the world was easily categorized into strict gender divisions, each with their
own behavioural rituals. The significance of such rituals - both in public and in private - meant that the characters
could only disclose their real thoughts through asides; to do otherwise would have been social suicide. Lady Windermere, her
husband (Gary Bond), Mrs. Erlynne and Lord Darlington (Edward Fox) were particularly fond of this strategy - even though many
of their surmises about their fellow-characters were wrong. But perhaps this was inevitable in a world of surface, where people
deliberately tried not to understand each other.
Johnson deliberately cast against type. Keith's Mrs. Erlynne was very different from
the kind of characters the actress played on television. Rather than trying to sustain social rituals, she critiqued them.
As the production unfolded, however, so Mrs. Erlynne's character changed, as she understood the importance of maintaining
such rituals to save Lady Windermere's marriage. Fox's Lord Darlington initially seemed like James Harthouse, the cad
the actor so memorably played in the famous television adaptation of Hard Times. As time passed, however, so Darlington's
weaknesses emerged. He deliberately tried to preserve a facade of wickedness, simply to maintain his own sense of self-worth.
However he revealed a good side to his nature; he deliberately tried to offer Lady Windermere an alternative to her sterile
life of London society. The fact that she refused him had more to do with her own inhibitions rather than with Darlington's
character. In the long speech where Darlington declared his love for her, Fox tended towards the over-elaborate, speaking
in pronounced cadences, but at least it was a true expression of his feelings in a world where honesty was held in little
esteem.
The production ended predictably with the Windermeres brought together and Mrs. Erlynne
consigned once more to the margins of society. It seemed that Victorian morality had once again emerged triumphant, but at
least this production showed what possibilities lurked underneath - particularly through Darlington - if people actually took
the trouble to take heed of them.
