Gwilt or Innocent

Speaking of battlefields (see below). And blood and thunder. Let me introduce you to Miss Lydia Gwilt, the anti-heroine of Armadale, the Milwaukee Repertory Theater’s latest world premiere. Several years in the making (I offered my two cents to the script process when I worked at the Rep), Jeffrey Hatcher’s adaptation of Wilkie Collins’ longest novel is a remarkable bit of dramatic storytelling, filled with some of the most diabolically entertaining characters you’ll see this side of Sweeney Todd.
Charles Dickens’ dark side, Wilkie Collins was a leading proponent of the “sensation novel,” a genre in which interest in reader “engagement” was taken to new levels. Here, every pulse-quickening gasp or shudder is a literary accomplishment. And while modern audiences may not react the way Collins’ Victorian readers did, there are still loads of guilty (or perhaps Gwilty?) pleasures in this well-spun yarn. Murder, say. As well as malice, general mayhem, and yes, monkeys.
It is story theater at its best, a style made famous by the Royal Shakespeare Company’s groundbreaking Dickens marathon, The Adventures of Nicholas Nickelby. Hatcher and the Rep actors have done a great job of painting in the supporting characters with a few deft strokes. Peter Silbert, with rheumy eyes and pallid skin, changes from the bombastically priggish Reverend Brock to the simpering Bashwood with the flip of a scarf and the slapping on of a bad toupee. Jim Pickering puffs his chest as Major Milroy, Armadale’s harrumphing future father-in-law. Then caves it in, dangling his arms nervously about his groin, to become Dr. Downward, the director of a shady and nefarious surgical establishment. Rose Pickering flutters nervously as Mrs. Milroy, then pops a cleavage-revealing button or two, and sneers her way into Mrs. Oldershaw, Downward’s partner in crime.
Part of the pleasure of Armadale is watching these transformations, and seeing the story unfold on Michael Ganio’s edifice of Victorian hardware and bric-a-brac. Here, a curtain hides what goes on behind closed doors (quite a lot, as it turns out), but also become a ship’s sail. Chairs become window grates, and a center-stage fainting couch (an emblem of Victorian “sensation" if there ever was), gets enough mileage to require several oil changes and a wheel balance.
A ballad of good and evil that spans generations, Armadale gets all the iniquity it needs from Lydia Gwilt (Deborah Staples). Gwilt is the actor’s actor, transforming herself from charming governess to diabolical murderess with ease. Ozias Midwinter, with shadowy eyes and a leather coat, looks like he could open for Fall Out Boy, but Michael Gotch saturates him with the ennui suggested by his ramblings about fate and dark destiny. And Brian Vaughn, dressed as a Victorian Sun King, exudes charm and fortune feelings, embodying the naïve goodness that always prevails in such stories.
Or does it?