The Country Wife Dramaturgical File
Concept
This version of The Country Wife will be one that starts in 1675 and lands firmly in the year 2021. While the play will start out similarly to how Wycherley's audiences first saw it performed in the late 1600s, it will slowly begin to modernize.
While the language itself will stay the same, the costumes will gradually become more contemporary as actors slowly shed their corsets and jackets to comfortable early 2000s evening and afternoon ware. The champagne flutes and puff pastries will gradually become Diet Coke and Mountain Dew with Swedish Fish and Takis. The Honorable Ladies will bring out cellphones and Morphe pallettes while the men are playing on Playstations. The anachronisms will slowly fill the stage to the point that the only thing unfamiliar to them will be the language itself.
The "Dance of the Cuckolds" will be the pinnacle of the present, with the performers doing a TikTok dance while donning COVID masks. This traditional-turned-modern take on The Country Wife will surprise audiences as they begin to see themselves in the characters.
We have decided upon this concept to not only to make the play relevant to the audience, but to also show them that a lot of the values of the play still remain: both the positives and the negatives that Wycherley was trying to point out to his audiences. Even in 2021, people will still do whatever is needed to protect their reputation (no matter the cost), and they will still continue to do immoral things (such as abuse their partners or cheat on them without permission) behind closed doors. We also want to produce this production in an attempt to encourage others to accept different genders and sexualities (especially for our older audience members who may not yet understand). Not all of the anachronisms will be funny and positive: some of them will be blindingly real and a glaring look into our society and the values it holds. Our version of The Country Wife will be a literal look into the past while we evaluate ourselves and our future.