By PETER CALDER
(Herald rating: * * )
For all his many virtues, Oscar Wilde was not half the playwright Shakespeare was, which perhaps explains why - unlike the Bard - he is unable to sustain the breathless attempts at modernisation which litter this adaptation of his famous play.
Director Parker, who helmed
a beautifully observed version of An Ideal Husband a couple of years back, doesn't move the play from its Edwardian setting; indeed he drags it further into it, embarking on the course scenarists call "opening out".
Thus the claustrophobic drawing rooms in which most productions - including the deliciously stagey 1952 version with Michael Redgrave and Edith Evans - are content to remain are left behind.
Algernon is pursued by black-clad creditors' agents (a running gag which becomes tedious almost as soon as it is used) and the cast goes punting on rivers, riding in cars, dining out and making odd sorties into tattoo parlours and music halls.
But the modernisation - of cinematic approach rather than setting - distracts because it's so busy.
Wilde's play, which he subtitled A Trivial Comedy for Serious People, is the perfect drawing-room comedy, a stellar example of the genre it both worships and parodies. A sly comedy of deception, it watches with an eyebrow arched ironically.
But there is no sense of Wilde's self-mocking detachment here as bachelor buddies Algernon (Everett) and Jack (Firth) court respectively Cecily (Witherspoon) and Gwendolen (O'Connor).
Complications abound, not least Jack's uncertain parentage. (He was found in a handbag at Victoria Station which makes him an unthinkable match in the eyes of Gwendolen's mother (Dench), Lady Bracknell). And, unsurprisingly, they are all climactically solved.
It's hopelessly, hilariously contrived, and its appeal resides in the sparkling wit of its lines. But amid the tumult of the constant scene changes, the pungent epigram becomes hard to hear.
The great lines ("To lose one parent may be regarded as a misfortune ... to lose both seems like carelessness") come as a shock rather than as the essence of a piece which is about nothing really, except two dandies professing sincere love while pretending to be somebodies they are not.
There's nothing wrong with the component parts - the production design is sublime and the performances uniformly excellent, although Dench's Bracknell, icy rather than shrill, is the best treat, and Edward Fox savours the delicious few lines he has as the butler, Lane.
But it never hangs together because it's florid at best and flat at worst. To start with Wilde and end up with that is worse than careless.
Cast: Rupert Everett, Colin Firth, Frances O'Connor, Reese Witherspoon, Judi Dench
Director: Oliver Parker
Rating: PG
Running time: 94 min
Screening: Rialto, from Thursday
By PETER CALDER
(Herald rating: * * )
For all his many virtues, Oscar Wilde was not half the playwright Shakespeare was, which perhaps explains why - unlike the Bard - he is unable to sustain the breathless attempts at modernisation which litter this adaptation of his famous play.
Director Parker, who helmed
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