<b>LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN</b> Festival Theatre/Shaw Festival SpeakupWNY | Buffalo NY and Buffalo News

Shaw Festival
Through October 19
LADY WINDERMERE'S FAN Festival Theatre/Shaw Festival

Oscar Wilde's “Lady Windermere's Fan” is a comic example of social criticism, filled with Wilde's pithy critiques of society.
He may have been a high-profile member of Victorian society but he was an outsider as the son of an Irish doctor who went to Trinity College, Dublin rather than Oxbridge.
He was famous for his writings and his flamboyant behavior and his successful plays, at least successful until his personal life fell apart.
He was married with children and gay at a time when that was a crime and a savagely punished one.
That was a secret he tried to hold onto...unsuccessfully.
In “Fan,” Mrs. Erlynne (Tara Rosling) manages to hold onto her secret to the end.
We are on the highest levels of late Victorian society, great nobles in that last gasp of wealth and title.
If you want a different view, head down Queen Street to the Royal George Theatre for W. Somerset Maugham's “Our Betters.”
Here, Lord Windermere (Martin Happer) and Lady Windermere (Marla McLean) are the partying toast of society although she won't be 21 until the night of Act 1 and there is to be a great party and Teresa Przybylski's set and William Schmuck's costumes make sure this is spectacle after spectacle.
Wilde gives the play the subtitle: A Play about a Good Woman, perhaps because Lady Windermere is a clueless woman leaning to good and honor.
At the party, Lady Windermere is told her husband is cheating on her with Mrs. Erlynne (Tara Rosling).
Of course, that's something the society around her would convince her is true since everyone in their social class up to and including the Prince of Wales was cheating and even Queen Victoria may have been getting it on with some staffers, not unknown to the Upper Crust.
Once told her husband is cheating, she starts re-looking at their relationship and listens to a proposition from Lord Darlington (Gray Powell) to head off with him.
She can't figure what her husband is involved in, unless it is an affair.
It isn't but that's the central plot of the story and I will skip it here.
It's that secrecy business.
This is all pretty tangled although essential to the story Wilde is telling.
There are all of these tangled romantic relationships, occasionally involving marriage.
At the heart of the story is that fan, an essential element of life among the rich of the day, with the way it's held, the way it's waved, even whether it's open or not telling a tale.
That's why the key questions are: Who has the fan and whose fan is it.
This is a comedy of words, endless flowing words, witty and angry, all telling a story.
It's a great production, with really strong direction from Peter Hinton keeping things moving quickly with the repartee flowing, using those Przybylski sets and Schmuck costumes.
Hinton is working with a strong and large cast, filled with Shaw Festival regulars even in small parts, McLean's Lady Windermere and Happer's Lord Windermere, Rosling's Mrs. Erlynne, Jim Mezon's Lord Augustus Lorton, Powell's Darlington and Guy Bannerman's Parker, the Windermere's butler.
"Lady Windermere"s Fan" is a classic play, getting a classic production from the Shaw and that's why it should be on your summer entertainment list.

A.W.