Being Mr Wickham – Jermyn Street Theatre
What makes a seductive storyteller? Is it the charm that derives from easy confidence or perhaps the anxious titillation induced by performed vulnerability?
Being Mr Wickham, one ought to learn one way or another. A character as easy to hate on second reading of Jane Austen’s Pride and Prejudice as he is tempting to root for in one’s first exposure to the novel, if any version of George Wickham knows one thing, it’s how to arouse a reaction in an audience. This play, itself by Adrian Lukis, who played Wickham in the BBC’s iconic Pride and Prejudice at 38 and now reprises the role in a script of his own genius at 67, works hard to flesh out the irredeemable rake and cast him in new light.
Neither dastardly villain nor tragic hero, Lukis’ vision of Wickham on the night of his 60th...