Has anyone noticed? A regional theatre company in Manchester has been steadily building toward national status. Founded in the mid-1950s at Chorlton-cum-Hardy by Frank Dunlop, it played as the Piccolo Theatre Company in the top half of the local Conservative club; growing quietly through other incarnations and venues, it settled at last into a purpose-built theatre-in-the-round at Manchester's Royal Exchange, taking the venue's name. A second house at Islington is now in the design stage. This will be shared with the Royal Shakespeare Company, confirming that the Royal Exchange Company is to attain the rank so far reserved for the RSC and the Royal National.
The IRA bomb which wrecked the Royal Exchange should have put a severe crimp in the company's activities. In fact it had the opposite effect. Despite an administrative splintering into five sites and the exile of its stage to a smaller 400-seat house at Upper Campfield Market, the atrocity gave impetus to plans already under way for the remodelling of the Royal Exchange, evoking a new vision: no longer a provincial "cathedral of culture," but a "magical palace" where people can shop, eat, relax and enjoy themselves outside as well as inside the performance. As described by director Braham Murray it is rather like the "pleasure palace" planned but never achieved in London by Joan Littlewood. With the help of the Lottery, her vision may become reality.
Murray hopes this fresh spirit of enterprise will help to combat the marginalisation of regional theatre in the national press, and crystallise the continuity of 40 years which has fed the morale and growth of the Royal Exchange Company. Unlike other prominent provincial troupes it has pursued a policy of encouraging risky new writing-underscored with a playwriting competition sponsored by Mobil Oil. That sponsorship has now lapsed, along with the competition, but the Royal Exchange's pursuit of new and foreign work is due to continue with pieces by Athol Fugard, Paul Godfrey, Brad Fraser and Tony Kushner's adaptation of a play by Pierre Corneille.
One of the more remarkable qualities of the Royal Exchange Company has been its ability to combine a practical (if sometimes uncertain) taste for contemporary work with the ability to stage superb productions of classics-not only serious enterprises such as Schiller, Shakespeare and Shaw, but lighter works which have retained the power to please and amuse audiences who (as Murray puts it) regard a visit to the Royal Exchange Company as a "big occasion," that is to say a formidable and rather expensive night out.
Murray's current revival of Oscar Wilde's Lady Windermere's Fan is an excellent example of that flair. His grasp of the fin de si?cle dramatic idiom catches the play perfectly. Wilde's wit, which can become tedious in the mouths of mediocre actors, is as light and crisp here as filo pastry, coating the rather stiff symmetry of Wilde's plot with enough exuberance and laughter to satisfy the most jaded onlooker. The unlikely story of a priggish young wife scandalised by a shady woman who turns out to be her long lost mother is laden with forced coincidence and awkward twists of character. That none of this matters onstage is due to Murray's direction, set into Simon Higlett's designs.
The director's skill would be wasted if his players were not so finely tuned. Gabrielle Drake-an actress who deserves a higher profile and status-gives a portrayal of the shady Mrs Erlynne that masters the style, wit and grace of Wilde's writing turn for turn, adding a dazzle of charm that is her own.
If the playing of Mrs Erlynne needs a special blend of warmth and technique, Lady Windermere-written almost as a cartoon prig-can easily be unpleasant and silly and so freeze the life out of the play. Rebecca Johnson avoids this trap. Few young players can move believably in period costume; Johnson is one of those. She also brings a passion to her priggishness which comes close to making it painfully real as makes no matter; this creates enough emotional space in what is really a dry, schematic role to make the mother-daughter turnabout at the end not credible, but satisfying.
The characters who support this pair-excepting Rosalind Knight's amusing dragon of a duchess, and a splendidly juicy Lord Augustus from James Saxon-make up a panelled wooden surrounding, just as Wilde designed it. The total effect is as fine as a well-framed picture by Whistler, and (in today's theatre) as rare. Some companies live up to their past. With this civilised production the Royal Exchange is living up to its future. Chapeau.
Lady windermere's fan
Oscar Wilde
Royal Exchange Theatre, Manchester
