Life is a complicated thing. Few things in life are more complicated than love, and few styles of storytelling have made love more complicated than Restoration comedy. If you’re unfamiliar with the term, think of Restoration comedy as the style that became popular after Shakespeare’s death, a comedy of manners satirizing all things courtly and all things romantic, and you won’t be far off.
In The Way of the World, Mirabell is in love with Millamant, but Millamant’s aunt, Lady Wishfort, hates Mirabell because he once pretended to love her and so refuses the match. Fainall is married to Lady Wishfort’s daughter, who is a former lover of Mirabell. Fainall has a mistress, Lady Marwood, who, not surprisingly, also is in love with Mirabell. (As you can probably tell, Mirabell is a player.) In order to marry Millamant and thus receive her dowry, Mirabell must find a way to trick Lady Wishfort into consenting to the marriage.
As I said, complicated, and that’s really only the beginning of William Congreve’s story, one so complicated that even audiences at the turn of the 18th century had difficulty following it. Given such a difficult script, filled with what is now considered archaic language, why might you be interested in attending this UT Department of Theatre & Dance production? The reasons are myriad. From Mirabell and Fainall’s first languid entrance into the chocolate shop, director Jesse Berger makes you feel as though you’ve been entirely transported to another time and place. While Sarah Davidson’s scenic design is appropriate enough with its open stage and simple wooden set-pieces, Sarah Mosher’s costumes are things of decadent beauty. Few periods outside the Restoration offer so much room for a costume designer to stretch, and Mosher takes full advantage. The men wear long, curling, flowing wigs, with hankies poking out of sleeves that seem to go on forever, legs encased in hose, and bows topping off even their shoes. The women are encased in skirts, overskirts, and bustles, sometimes with long trains flowing outward, and feathered hats and headpieces abound. Of course, the costumes wouldn’t work nearly as well if they weren’t worn well, and the actors, as a group, show their accoutrements off to great effect, strutting and posing and preening throughout.
The only thing that falls down is the story, and while I’m tempted, I can’t fault the actors or even director Berger for it. Congreve’s script is such a mishmash of complications that I’m not sure any group of actors, or any director, could make sense of it all. As a group, the actors, from Corey Jones as the charming Mirabell to Jeremy Selim as the country bumpkin Sir Wilfull to Blake DeLong as the fop Witwould, effectively embody their characters physically and vocally. And while on occasion they move too quickly through the text, I’d much rather have actors going too quickly than too slowly. All in all, The Way of the World is by far the most effective UT production I’ve seen in years.
The Way of the World
Brockett Theatre, through Dec. 3
Running Time: 2 hr, 40 min
This article appears in December 1 • 2006.