The world and its wicked ways

Something in William Congreve’s cynical late Restoration comedy “The Way of the World” as presented in STC’s luscious staging might produce odd, rebounding effects in some viewers. I, for instance, had an overwhelming urge to pull on my oldest pair of jeans and eat pork and beans out of a can.

Part of that may be due to costume designer Jane Greenwood’s sugar-shock inducing confections, layer upon detailed layer of flourish, flounce, and furbelow — and that’s not a complaint. When the intricacies of the plot get so entangled that the most careful listener must give up in despair, there are still those costumes to lead our attention around the stage. Eventually we notice that everything is green. After all, green is the color of money and of envy — two thematic guideposts for our jog with the socially ambitious park strollers and chocolate house clientele of England, circa 1700.

Fortunately, it’s not my job to outline the plot, a razor-edged comedy of deception and self-delusion, vanity, malicious greed, and foppery that has no equal. Just trying to figure out who is married to whom, who used to be whose lover, and who is trying to get Lady Wishfort’s money by inheritance, marriage, or trickery is enough to make the most stout-hearted soul lie down with a cold compress.

Director Michael Kahn, backed by some of the brightest luminaries in the STC acting stable, takes a swashbuckling approach and makes this already broad stroked play larger than life. Set designer Wilson Chin plays along with his fold-out Chocolate House and green tootsie roll pop trees lining the promenade. How better to suggest the flamboyant unreality of these highly mannered people and their follies?

Central to it all is Mirabell (Christopher Innvar) and his pursuit of the capricious Mrs. Millamant (Veanne Cox), niece of Lady Wishfort and heiress to a substantial sum. Mr. Innvar’s balanced performance reveals a man of the world in all respects — handsome, witty, and capable of both blatant mendacity as well as unsuspected virtue. Ms. Cox steals her scenes just by existing; there is enormous unexpected fun in her contrary temperament, and the scene in which the recalcitrant lovers outline their prenuptial conditions for one another is a first of its kind.

Every human foible that Congreve wished to magnify is displayed in pairs — and identified with names that anticipate Dickens by more than a century. So we have Anthony Witwoud and his dour friend Petulant, both of them diligently seeking the social stratosphere in their outlandish green getups and long powdered wigs, and both of them imagining themselves fit suitors for Millamant’s dowry. Floyd King and J. Fred Shiffman are priceless in these roles, a pair of faux French oddities, unconsciously funny and magnificently useless.

The servant who outwits the master is as old as Roman theatre, and here we have two: Foible, always three steps ahead of Lady Wishfort, played with an earnest, straightfaced humor by Colleen Delany, and her husband, Waitwell, (in a scintillating performance by Todd Scofield) who doubles as the fictitious but nevertheless lovestruck Sir Rowland. If Congreve wished to skewer rich, aging, romantically deceived widows, he couldn’t have done better than Lady Wishfort anxiously patting the cracks in her make-up and protesting that in affairs of the heart, she can never be the one to “push.” Nancy Robinette is a dream in this role and brings a choice mixture of innocent humor and pathos to the foolishly deluded old lady.

The darkest of the world’s ways are found in the blatant deceptions of Fainall (Andrew Long) married for money to Lady Wishfort’s daughter (Barbara Garrick) and plotting with his lover, Mrs. Marwood (Deanne Lorette) to get full control of the fortune. Long and Lorette share a predatory quality, all the more sinister for their handsomeness and cold intensity.

A lighter note is struck with the entrance of Lady Wishfort’s country nephew, Sir Wilfull Witwoud (Doug Rees), a loud but good natured fellow who looks forward to being improved by travel. This is the only character at home with his rough simplicity and therefore is an embarrassment to his family. At Lady Wishfort’s urging, he manfully takes his turn at wooing Millamant but has to get thoroughly pickled in alcohol first. It will spoil nothing to say that he is ultimately unsuccessful.

Now considered the greatest of Congreve’s plays, “The Way of the World” was intentionally brutal in its satire of ambitious English society. The stately, “happy ending” dance in conclusion, when all is reconciled and the day is saved, is but a nod to earlier plays that insisted on sending the audience away happy. Three hundred years later, modern audiences will delight — or despair — in recognizing that though the world may have changed, the ways haven’t.

Margaret Lawrence is a member of the American Theatre Critics Association. She teaches drama and English at CCHS.