The Country Wife – The Stage

Published Tuesday 28 October 2008 at 18:50 by Gerald Berkowitz

Skilfully cut to a sprightly lunch hour, C Company’s modern dress version of Wycherley’s comedy of wit and seduction eliminates some subplots and secondary characters and in the process surprisingly shifts the comic centre. Wycherley’s core premise, of a rake who feigns impotence to attract women and disarm their husbands, is reduced to a bare mention, somewhat marginalising what was meant to be the central figure and turning the prime butt of Wycherley’s satire, a jealous husband trying to keep his wife from city ways, into a more sympathetic, if still comic character.

James Holmes skilfully underplays the husband, finding all the laughs without over-punching them. Nicci Holtby is particularly delightful in capturing the country wife’s not-so-innocent excitement at discovering the temptations of the town, and Joanna Nuttall blends comedy with some serious comment in a surviving subplot, as the one sensible character watching her self-absorbed fiance blindly let a friend steal her from him.

 Remotegoat by Jill Lawrie

Bitesize take on Wycherley satire 

Tucked away just off Fleet Street, this delightful playhouse offers lunch box theatre to a wide and varied audience, ranging from city slickers to the curious tourist. 

‘The County Wife’, sandwiched into a lunchtime slot, was performed by the small but passionate C Company made up of some twenty five writers, actors and directors who offer high quality and challenging theatre to their audiences.

Directed by Aileen Gonsalves, much of the sexiness of the original tale is lost and the fact that Mr Horner is masquerading as a eunuch plays second fiddle to the jealous husband/brother Mr Pinchwife attempting to keep the women in his life away from temptation! 

Despite being reduced to a bit player the charming Royce Cronin excels as the roguish lothario (Mr Horner) who steals the heart of the naïve country wife Mrs Pinchwife endearingly played by Nicci Holtby.  Her husband Mr Pinchwife (James Holmes) won the audience over with his comic paranoia ~ culminating in a hilarious and enraged attempt at demolishing an orange!  The lively flamboyant Sparkish was convincingly played by Matthew Burton.

These half dozen performers brought together a most entertaining bitesized package much enjoyed by some eighty or so enthusiastic and appreciative supporters.