THE WILDE COWARD
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Wilde and Coward were very much part of the society they lampooned and would have wanted it no other way–the plays of both invariably end with the status quo unchanged. They were able to target the absurdities of upper-class behavior because they knew the conventions. If Fritz Dickmann, a young midwestern playwright, intended to satirize the elite of either Wilde’s or Coward’s day, he should have done a lot more research. In The Wilde Coward the Buggeringwells are throwing a sumptuous garden party, but it’s set in 1952, when most of England was still on rations. And it may have seemed funny to have Lady B. wear a diamond tiara with her tennis whites, but tennis whites are most inappropriate for a garden party, a rather formal affair that is not synonymous with a backyard barbecue.
The word “scandal” connotes a flouting of conventions–conventions Wilde and Coward were very careful to set up, the better to knock them down by exposing the ridiculousness beneath the veneer. Dickmann has dispensed with the veneer altogether. A leer or an ogle is only funny when executed by someone from whom we would not expect it, which is why the bit about dogs suffering from postwar trauma is funny. But proclaiming the characters’ bawdiness from the beginning by giving them names such as Buggeringwell and Pelvishampton takes all the double out of the entendre.
