The stage is set so sparsely that each piece of furniture is symbolic ­— sofa, fireplace, coat-stand, and even drooping plant all create a perfect vision of domesticity. This is the battleground of Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband — beginning at his own party, Robert Chiltern is caught up in a tricksy battle of morality and (alas, not his) wits as the pernicious Mrs Cheveley’s blackmail threatens to crumble his wife’s “ideal husband” portrait of him. Amidst these trappings of domesticity are the clues to Frederick Upton’s vision: an unobtrusive (if that can be possible) American flag, ghastly yellow wallpaper fit for the 70s, and a tiny bell by the door in which lingers remnants of the play’s “Englishness”. Upton’s production of An Ideal Husband refreshes and recontextualises Oscar Wilde’s classic play, plucking it from Victorian England and thrusting it into 1970s America. Suddenly, the political scandal which precedes and frames the play no longer hinges on any business with canals, but on involvement in the last years of the Vietnam War. Wilde’s characters exist in a tumultuous and high-stakes Washington, albeit one with a strange penchant for distinctly Victorian humour.

“Cross-Atlantic differences in class systems amalgamate into a constant sense of shifting between the old and the new”

This intriguing idea is often successful — the script is altered to accommodate its new setting, and new moments of laughter bubble up from the well-worn text. But the setting hits difficulties. The play seems only partially transposed into this early 70s period, where the presence of “butlers”, “tea”, “clubs” (of the gentleman’s type), and cross-Atlantic differences in class systems amalgamate into a constant sense of shifting between the old and the new. This shifting is inherent to this ambitious change ­— Bernard Shaw, in his 1895 review of An Ideal Husband, wrote that to an Irishman (i.e. Wilde), “there is nothing so comic as an Englishman’s seriousness” and “self-unconsciousness”. In a play that rests so much of its spirit in mockingly undermining the English, the move to America is jarring.

Multiple elements of this production are as shifting as its setting. The sound design features staple 70s hits both as overture to the play (ABBA on entry was, of course, much appreciated) and as transitions between acts. Dan Ward’s choices leant into Wilde’s satire — ELO’s Evil Woman playing immediately after Mrs Cheveley’s thieving antics could either be satirical genius or utterly ham-fisted (I lean towards the former). The smooth 70s jazz that played abruptly over Mrs Chiltern’s tears seemed somewhat out of place, though the fade to black accompanying it attempted to do her more service. Indeed, the play’s lighting design, though simple, effectively contrasted Act 1’s party to the domestic nature of the scenes that followed — an initial suffusion of colour simultaneously accented the periphery while highlighting the sofa as a domestic focus, aligning nicely with a switch into a warm, yellowy wash for the remainder of the play.

“Alice Roberts as Mrs Cheveley continuously and effortlessly held control of the audience’s gaze”

This awareness of the space was equally honed by An Ideal Husband’s actors. Alice Roberts as Mrs Cheveley continuously and effortlessly held control of the audience’s gaze, so that the other actors seemed to orbit around her. Her tone and Wildean drawl fluctuated with an ease suggestive of both a keen ear for the rhythms of dialogue and a particular affinity for this kind of wit, enabling her to hold a sense of power and underlying threat from the outset. Goring hits the mark when he exclaims “how you women war against each other!” since the women in this production are its absolute strengths, and on this battleground all seem to take the prize. Romy Negrin’s Mabel Chiltern is incisive and strikingly funny, and Alessandra Rey as the idealistic Mrs Chiltern made a possibly plain and moralistic wife a truly sympathetic and dynamic character who consistently outshined her husband. All this is apt in a play that often flourishes as a work about women being repeatedly disappointed by their husbands — “Our husbands never appreciate anything in us. We have to go to others for that!”

But in the end, Wilde’s infamous epigrams win pride of place. The ultimate aphorism in this production is one of sartorial self-expression: “Fashion is what one wears himself. What is unfashionable is what other people wear.” Will Irngartinger’s Arthur Goring proclaims this while fastening flowers into the button-hole of his shirt — one part of a collection (admittedly, of two) of some of the most “fashion[able]” shirts in this 70s America. Goring swaggers around the stage (he even seems to have picked out a particular spot for Wall-Leaning) and steals the majority of his scenes with a well-balanced oscillation between witty commentary and unlikely compassion which epitomises the play’s aims. Despite moments where it appears to stumble over itself, Upton’s production uses its stronger cast members to hit something of the play’s core, even if its setting may not ring entirely true with the source material.

An Ideal Husband is playing at the Corpus Playrooms from Tuesday 2nd to Saturday 6th May, 7pm.