Greetings, Jane Austen loyalists, and yes, I’m talking to you. So is George Wickham. I don’t need to tell you who George Wickham is: the military man, whose very surname suggests wickedness and who acted his wickedness out when invading the Bennet family – Elizabeth his first target – and then flying off with flighty Lydia. This is the George Wickham whose name was defamed until his boyhood pal Fitzwilliam Darcy located the absconding pair, bestowing sufficient monies on them to make an honest woman of her, if not him.
Well, you Austen aficionados, you who haven’t read Pride and Prejudice just the once but at least twice and perhaps more, are maybe rereading the classic right this moment, you’ve got a treat in store – as do (perhaps less so) other lovers of theater, if not first and foremost passionate Austenites.
Now we’re fortunate enough to find erstwhile scoundrel Wickham alone in a sedate early Victorian study. He’s celebrating his 60th birthday by addressing an audience about his life in a tasty bonbon called Being Mr Wickham. He’s represented by Adrian Lukis, who also co-wrote the 55-minute autobiographical monologue with Catherine Curzon. They’ve produced their piece so deftly that it’s virtually impossible to leave the famous bloke’s company without liking him. That’s right, this 60-year-old is damnably likable.
(And no, Austen perfectionists, she might never have employed the word “bloke.” If she ever did, please advise.)
Earlier in the birthday proceedings – “I loathe old age,” he eventually cries out – Wickham was at the Assembly and explains that Lydia has barricaded herself in the bedroom after accusing him of making unnecessary eyes at another dancer during a quadrille. This vexatious development affords him the opportunity to imbibe brandy and reflect on his life, including his initial estrangement from Darcy, whom he’s considered “arrogant” from their earliest days palling around on Pemberley’s endless acres.
Benefitted by writers Lukis and Curzon, Wickham talks about subjects as varied as his being godson to Darcy’s father, his fateful falling out with Darcy as a result of the man’s denying him his ambition to be a curate(!), his military career and friendship with equally roguish Mr Denny, his admiration for Lord Byron and his classing the poet as far more rascally than his comparatively moderate self, his truly happy life with Lydia right up to their present, and, as surely expected, his history with the Bennets – and even the next generation of children.
This Wickham is, and proudly asserts himself to be, reliably entertaining company. He’s as good as his word, as good as his many words, as good as his supply of amusing anecdotes. Quoting from them extensively as he moves about the understated room (Libby Watson the designer) would be spoiling the consistent jovial indulgences Lukis provides under Guy Unsworth’s keen direction.
There is one rather sizable aspersion Wickham casts on Austen’s proud focal male figure deserving of mention. Registering it here, however, does come under spoiler assignment. Therefore, it might be advisable for some Austen devotes to shield their eyes. (Were she alive nowadays, Austen might have done well to heed the advice.) Wickham quite slyly points out that Darcy’s paying off Wickham to save his one-time friend’s stained name as well as Lydia’s wasn’t simply a gentleman’s gesture. It wasn’t purely altruistic. He notes that the gift did prove to be the action at last winning Elizabeth’s Bennet’s no longer prejudiced hand.
Lukis, a well-dressed and rugged Wickham, is perfection in this role, playing a settled country gentleman still proficient at handling an invisible sabre (English spelling used, given the circumstances). And why is he so well suited? He first played Wickham in the Colin Firth-led 1995 BBC Pride and Prejudice adaptation. Indeed, in describing Darcy’s cruelty to Wickham over the clerical position, he speaks the same lines he spoke to Jennifer Ehle’s Elizabeth Bennet.
Apart from the Lukis-Curzon insinuation on Darcy’s personally political tactic as leaning on Wickham’s side of the story, Being Mr Wickham is a lofty achievement. It sounds extremely close to, if not exactly as, Jane Austen herself might have composed it. Without question the delightful outing earns the polite clapping of many gloved hands. That’s because Derbyshire residents would have had no idea of anything like what a standing ovation means.
Being Mr Wickham opened May 31, 2023, at 59E59 and runs through June 11. Tickets and information: 59e59.org
