ARTicles vol. 3 i.1a: Side Entrances

How can one present a comedy from the 17th century to a modern audience? One might err by staying too faithful to the period, creating a quaint stage picture that douses the play in formaldehyde to keep it historically accurate. Alternatively, one might introduce innovation after innovation until the production seems unrelated to the author’s play. Director Mark Wing-Davey and set designer Marina Draghici straddle this line between historicism and contemporary aesthetics to bring John Vanbrugh’s The Provok’d Wife to life. To capture the spark of the original, Mark and Marina first researched just how Vanbrugh’s play might have been presented in its own day. As Marina explains, “Mark and I felt that we should look at the ground plan and the stage the way it was in the period of the play’s writing. So I opened my history of theatre books to refresh my memory. Restoration comedy was performed on an Italianate stage which would have had sets of doors on each side; the background would have been a false perspective. We realized that the play must have been written with that plan in mind as there are lots of entrances and exits that have to happen instantly. Mark wanted to direct the play with the original tempo in mind, and the way to do that is to start with a Restoration ground plan and build up from there, simply modernizing that basic stage.” And modern the set is. Many of the materials used in its construction are contemporary. Both walls and furniture are made of white lycra and plexiglass. Although the set is painted shades of gray, bursts of color appear for specific locations. Turquoise panels with golden cranes adorn the walls in Lady Fancyful’s apartment, while a scarlet table and chairs accent Lord Brute’s. The architecture of the stage furthers the contemporary aesthetic as well. While the set may appear simple at first because of its clean geometry, there is also complexity. Large boxes slide out from the walls, much like a filing cabinet, allowing separate interior units to appear instantaneously for new scenes. These units combine in a multitude of configurations, continually transforming the basic plan of the Restoration stage. While the Brute house, for example, uses upstage boxes to recreate a large townhouse, Constant and Heartfree discuss their love lives in a smaller box downstage. Marina has even created a way to alter the apparent depth of the stage according to each scene’s needs. Panels can be added or removed from the interiors of the boxes to make them shallow or deep, and the upstage wall, which is lowered for interiors, will fly out for the garden scenes, revealing a great expanse of trees. The set functions as an elaborate machine, changing from a simple plan to more complicated configurations. This flexibility allows Mark to control the entire stage picture. As Marina explains, “Mark likes the mechanics of the stage. He likes to direct scenery as much as he likes to direct actors.” Because the set is so dynamic, Mark can achieve a special look for each scene. Though there is a high degree of contemporary mechanization, Marina is working hard to keep the atmosphere true to the seventeenth century, avoiding an antiseptic environment. She describes this concern, saying that the set should not look “too clean and too sterile. When you think about London in Vanbrugh’s time, it was rather dirty.” Not even the upper class could avoid the general “shabbiness” of everyday life, so this quality pervades the entire show. At the most basic level, everything will be aged and distressed to appear worn and well used. A spittoon remains onstage for the entire performance as an emblem of dirty London, and Covent Garden is now an old food market, where characters meet for intrigues among masses of rotting vegetables. Belinda and Lady Brute attempt their romantic assignations in an unexpected space. As Marina explains, “these women are disguising themselves and doing something very bold for that time, so we decided that we should create a red-light district. It’s more dangerous for these women to go there, so it’s much more fun.” Marina and Mark have created an amazing set. While contemporary, it also presents the Restoration in all its grubby glory. In an age of disinfectant, The Provok’d Wife is a world of dirt and sweat, a world of sex and love, a world not entirely unlike our own. John Herndon is a first-year dramaturgy student in the A.R.T./MXAT School Institute for Advanced Theatre Training.