(Courtesy of Wikipedia Commons)
The lights have just been lowered to signal the start of the play. Conversations die down to soft murmurs and then cease altogether as the audience embraces an artificial twilight. The stage brightens with a golden glow. The first performers stride into view and my mind sinks into the possibilities of this plot, which begins to unfold in an engaging and amusing storyline and pulls me right into the late 17th century.
The CU Theater and Dance Department’s presentation of William Wycherley’s “The Country Wife” is a performance that transcends a time barrier of a few hundred years and reaches the modern-day viewer with its comedic wit and use of sexual innuendo.
The play, which was first performed in 1675 at the Theatre Royal, Drury Lane in London tells the story of the charming Mr. Horner, a man who poses as a eunuch in hopes that his renowned impotency will win him the trust of local husbands so that he may sleep with their wives.
City women line up to take advantage of Horner’s services as their husbands go about their days in a comfortable state of oblivion. One man, skeptical of Horner’s reputation, tries in vain to keep his simple country wife—who is so enamored with town life—from falling into the other man’s grasp.
This performance, while at times is a little confusing only due to some slightly outdated vocabulary, stands out as a piece that is easy to relate to, even in a political and social climate that is probably much different from that of the English Restoration under Charles II.
The interactions between the characters, which are all played with a refreshing sense of clarity and originality, allows viewers to identify with this piece and to find a bit of their present in the past.
“The Country Wife” shows that many things may change over time, but people generally stay the same and relationships have hardly transformed at all. It makes a statement about the dynamics between men and women, and about the accepted yet seldom understood ways that they co-exist in the world.
The messages of this play are delivered in perhaps the best way possible: through humor and an entertaining plot. What better way to see how jealousy can be a source for both admiration and rejection? Or how it’s somehow fated that the sleaziest man will always manage to come out on top?
“The Country Wife” is definitely worth a trip to the theater and will be showing Feb. 17 through 20 at 7:30 p.m. and Feb. 21 at 2 p.m. Tickets are available at the box office located in the theater building or online.
Contact CU Independent Staff Writer Kaely Moore at Kaely.moore@colorado.edu.
