Witticism is the way in a complex 'World'

Perhaps if William Congreve's first audience of Londoners had spent the last 300 years thinking over his play instead of being dead, they might have gotten the story line sorted out by now. Really, not all that much has changed since 1700—complexity is still The Way of the World. Of course, nowadays the play is appreciated for its witty epigrams and satirical upper-class personalities. Back in the old days, audiences dismissed it as overly confusing.

COURTESY YALE REPERTORY THEATRE The actors freeze. The audience sobs. The scones are gone.

In the experience of the first-time viewer, centuries are negligible: with all the advances of our age, we still flounder for three hours in the same muddle of perplexity. For this reason, it is advisable to take a moment to do some reading, sketch out the family tree, or jot down an outline before attending this play at the Yale Rep.

Here's a bit to get you started: the games all center around Mirabell's (John Hines) scheming—the targeted victim is the rich old Lady Wishfort (Sandra Shipley), a woman with "a face like an old peel'd wall." In this world, money trickles down the contortions of familial lines, which are cleverly redirected through trickery. One can only imagine what it must take to weave one's way through a world with such extravagant tangles of deceitful relations.

This is not to say that these Englishfolk can't hold their own with distinctive charm. As Mirabell quips, "Where modesty's ill manners, 'tis but fit that impudence and malice pass for wit." As much as their complex schemes sap the brain's energy, the lovers' repartée sparks with witticisms. In this world, the players' intentions are as devilishly pronged as their tongues; social functions are attended "like the coroner's inquest, to sit upon the murdered reputation of the week."

Among the sharpest of the actors is Mrs. Marwood (Laurie Williams): she slides artfully between and around the other characters in an effort to foil Mirabell's scheming. Deliberately cool, well-spoken, and subtly conniving, Williams enunciates her words distinctly, which aids the audience in following her designs. Her entrance is an immeasurable relief after the rapid-fire assault of the first scene, in which important information is disclosed in the conversation of Mirabell and Fainhall (Willis Sparks), but hopelessly jumbled in the racing crackle of their dialogue.

The play is most effective when it pauses from the distractions of such plot twists and focuses instead on further developing its colorful characters. The scene in which the lover Mirabell and his airy coquette Millamant exchange prerequisites for their proposed matrimony is particularly amusing. As Mirabell complains to his unimpressed lady, "A man may as soon make a friend by his wit, or a fortune by his honesty, as win a woman by plain-dealing and sincerity." Mirabell's exasperated demeanor wins laughs against Millamant's disdainful disparagement as she finally agrees to "dwindle into a wife," and the two complement each other in reluctant mutual admiration.

As is typical for the Yale Rep, all this merriment is set against a backdrop that is both elaborate and odd. Most curious is the expressionistic set of St. James's Park—it's all neon green lighting, which gives off a bare, rather futuristic aura. The room of the first scene is hastily closed and compacted into a tall green cylinder, which stands alongside a rather mysterious large green ball. Among the puzzlement of their onstage surroundings, the characters are identifiably flamboyant period pieces. Their foolish periwigs and splashy cloaks glitter onstage and are nearly as ridiculous as the courting practices of their wearers.

Any ridiculousness onstage, however, pales in comparison to the advertisements that the Rep has distributed for this performance—it warrants mentioning that the play is actually the antithesis of bared breasts and Restoration-era sexiness. Contrary to the painting on the playbill cover, Congreve's play isn't about sex at all. It's about greedy calculations. This actually seems to be the point: romantic passion has little place here, in the cold-blooded battleground of feuding relatives and inherited money.

However, there is both a world of wit and a measure of tedium to be found: while the play can be exhausting, especially as the final act tends to drag, there are countless gems of delightful humor along the way.

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