First, the play. Collins originally released the novel in serial form, as was common for the day (see Dickens), so the 752 page Penguin Classic has innumerable twists, turns and cliffhangers. As might be expected, Archer’ adaptation of such a work into even the lengthy 2 and a half hour production results in a sometimes campy, sometimes dark, always meandering, scattering of a play.
Structure: The mechanics are the play of binary pairs. There are 2 Allen Armadales (the biological and the adopted); there are two more Allen Armadales, (the sons); there is the good fiancé and the evil temptress; the clergyman and the Renfield; Victorian parents and the Victorian snake-oil doctor and fishwife.
Plot: The story starts as a comedy of errors-type play of multiple Allens, and quickly darkens into a Victorian Gothic of murder and revenge. The adopted Allen murders the biological Allen at sea, and then writes his son a letter. The son Allen of adopted Allen (impoverished and haunted) then seeks out the son Allen of biological Allen (wealthy and happy-go-lucky). But here the plot twists. Biological Allen and his wife had employed the forgery skills of a servant girl to enable their marriage. However, the honeymoon murder of the groom caused the wife to sell the servant girl into slavery rather than pay her for the forgery. This wronged servant girl, returned as the heartless governess, Lydia Gwilt, is the eventual protagonist of the play. Lydia, still young because of surgery and snake-oil, seduces the betrothed son of biological Allen as well as son of adopted Allen (called Ozias and turned protector) and Renfield. Lydia’s revenge arc is interrupted by her falling in love with Ozias, and she attempts to call off the trap she has set for son of biological Allen and his fiancé (her ward, Neelie). Lawyers, private investigators, and self-righteous clergymen conspire to force Lydia back into her revenge plot with threats of revelation. In the end, Lydia murders the clergyman, but finally commits suicide beside the body of Ozias, whom she thinks she has inadvertently killed. A la Romeo and Juliet, Ozias is not dead, and wakes to find the lifeless body of his love, Lydia, who, in the end, sacrificed herself to love rather than finish her story of revenge. Ozias leaves England to become a journalist. Fin.
Follow all of that? Realize, I left a lot of the sub-plots out.
Anyway, the actors were superb. Even the sometimes-strained British accents did not take away from the fun they must have had with all of the twists and turns. Deborah Staples was the (eventual) main character, Lydia Gwilt, and the standout of the play. Her transitions from exposition to interaction, from evil to benign, were light, smooth and often hilarious. Emily Trask, who played the virginal Neelie Milroy, offered an excellent foil for Staples’s Gwilt. Neelie began the play young and naïve, but matured through the action and came to understand the other forces at play. The two female leads really held the piece together for me.
Problems: My main problem is that I can’t decide if the play was flawed, or it the choice of books to try to adapt was flawed. It’s all just too much. There is too much murder for camp, too much camp for gothic, too much exposition for character development, and too many characters for the time allotted. There is the theme of mistaken identity, the theme of revenge, the theme of fate versus choice, the theme of poverty versus wealth, the theme of love versus history. Too much. Perhaps that is the final evaluation of the play. Too much everything. You need a double-shot of espresso and a notepad just to keep up.
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