Theater Review

John Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife, is just over 300 years old, but as directed by Mary Wing-Davey it’s as funny and engaging for a modern audience as anything else on stage today.

The story begins with Sir Brute griping about his wife of two years; he claims she married him for money. Though she’s never done anything wrong exactly, he can no longer stand her presence, and drowns his sorrows in drink and bawdy revelry with a gang of unsavory courtiers.

The web of intimacies quickly unfolds. Peter Rini’s Ned Constant pursues a friendship with the unpalatable knight in hopes of getting closer to the beautiful Lady Brute, whom he has loved from afar since the day he first saw her—the day of her marriage to Sir Brute. Meanwhile Heartfree, played by Adam Dannheisser, scoffs at his friend’s romanticism—until he too finds himself in love with one woman and pursued by another—the self-absorbed and incessantly chatty Lady Fancyfull, hailed by all as the most ridiculous gentlewoman in town. In turn, her French attendant, Madamoiselle, flatters her mistress incessantly while having a fling with the Brutes’ manservant, Rasor.

Written during the Restoration period, when witty and risqué was the fashion, the play was comparable to late-night cable programming in terms of sexual innuendo and scandalous content. Still, slight adjustments to the script overcome any lingering barriers of temporal culture. For example, company veteran Remo Airaldi delivers a new thoughtful and amusing prologue in rhyme. Furthermore the actors forgo the standard drone, which so often hold back productions of older material, in favor of a soothing Virginia drawl—which they generally pull off.

Technical details meet the A.R.T.’s usual professional and creative standards. The simple white set has six sliding compartments which demarcate different locations, allowing the actors to move easily from scene to scene and easing the audience through frequent site changes. The costumes, inspired by the punk designs of Vivianne Westwood, are entertainment in themselves—a fascinating blend of patterns, textures, and colors perfectly coordinated with characters’ personalities. Particularly stunning are Lady Fancyfull’s hot-pink, floor-length feathery cloak and the dress Sir Brute wears to the magistrate’s home. Yes, I said dress.

The play centers on upper-class society, but most of the powerful scenes take place in offbeat situations, like a secret meeting in the red-light district and a midnight cross-dressing spree in an outdoor produce market. It is the servant couple, played by Karen MacDonald and Thomas Derrah, who hilariously propel the plot through some of its most crucial twists and turns. Their second act tryst summarizes all the characters’ struggles between the forbidden desires, ethical dilemmas and stifling social conventions which they constantly confront in their lives.

The cast is full to the brim with talent, though one member truly stands out; it is difficult to conceive of a more disgusting character than the tobacco-smoking, liquor-swilling, foul-mouthed, ungrateful Sir Brute, and even more difficult to imagine anyone carrying him off to more repulsive perfection than Bill Camp.

But The Provok’d Wife is a comedy, after all, and at the end even this villain has his moments of sympathy. In the end, Brute saves the lovers from a disastrous misunderstanding with his appeal for simple communication. “Your people of wit have got such cramp ways of expressing themselves, they seldom comprehend one another. Pox take you both, will you speak in the language of common sense, that you may be understood?”

Unlike some of its characters, the production has little trouble explaining itself. Sophisticated and witty without being pretentious, it manages to convey its message subtly but effectively. The Provok’d Wife is the A.R.T. at its most entertaining.

—Julia Twarog

—The Provok’d Wife will play through Dec. 26. Tickets $12-$67, available at the Loeb Box Office (Tues-Sun 12-5 p.m.) or student rush one hour before the show.