True, there are a lot of Wilde's usual quips downgrading late Victorian society to the ridiculous, but one senses that here he is being much more serious than usual. We get a look at dirty politics, people who are willing to gain wealth by any underhanded means, and air-heads who only deign to look at the corruption around them when it touches themselves too closely. One of the characters is even guilty of the crime of "insider trading". Some things never change! There is also a look at people with a better character, but perhaps too much better. They set impossibly high standards that make no exceptions for human frailty. And then there is the villainess hoist on her own petard, as they say, whom in the old melodramas we would be invited to hiss. Not here, though. Read on only if you don't mind having some of the denouement revealed.
We are given a very competent cast, beautiful sets colourfully photographed, in fact the best, to my mind, of the "Play of the Month" series. But the star of the piece, is the totally unscrupulous manipulator played by that great British actress, Margaret Leighton. "Mrs. Cheveley" is surely a total sociopath. We learn she stole from her classmates at school, she has in the not too distant past stolen a valuable broach/bracelet from a hostess she visited, she accumulated wealth by conspiring in unscrupulous schemes with an international financier, and at present she is blackmailing an MP to force him to advance in Parliament a fraudulent canal building scheme. Can you countenance such an one without nausea? Well, Margaret portrays this hussy so charmingly and beautifully, I found myself actually hoping she would succeed! She doesn't of course, but if she isn't hailed into court and prosecuted, she won't exactly be living in chill penury. The lady just likes the best for herself. Doesn't everyone?
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