I walked into the small theatre and settled myself in my seat in almost the exact middle of the second row and only feet from the small stage. As I gazed at the table set for dinner with a card announcing that it was reserved for a Lord Peter Wimsey, I couldn't help but wonder if Gaudy Night would be worth my getting so excited about it.
Within minutes of Lord Peter and Harriet settling themselves down at the table and beginning to talk, all my concerns were forgotten. Taproot Theatre, I am so sorry that I ever doubted you. This was the first play that I'd been to in years, and it was splendidly well-done. Harriet was lovely, Lord Peter was wonderful, their relationship is beautiful, and I'm now obsessed with the 1930s. (Is that when it started? I'd almost forgotten. Now I'm kind of obsessed with the whole first half of the 20th century. Do you see the effect this play had on me? It's shocking.)
(And here comes a not-very-concise and rambly summary.)
Gaudy Night is set in England in 1935. The main character (unlike all the other Dorothy L. Sayers mysteries) is Harriet Vane, a mystery writer, who is invited to attend what is basically a ten-year reunion for the graduates of Shrewsbury, the very first women's college at Oxford. When she arrives for the gaudy, she learns that someone is leaving people obscene notes and vandalizing college property. The dean asks if Harriet would be willing to look into the matter, since calling in the police would ruin the reputation of the college. But, just because Harriet writes mysteries doesn't mean that she's an expert in solving them. However, Harriet accepts the case, and also receives help from Lord Peter Wimsey, an aristocratic amateur detective who saved her life five years earlier and has been proposing marriage to her at regulated intervals ever since. (His first proposal? "What I mean to say is, when all this is over, I want to marry you, if you can put up with me, and all that.")
Harriet, who thinks that Lord Peter is just a rich idiot and desperately wishes that she didn't owe him for saving her life, has refused him every time...but also hasn't sent him away.
For much of Gaudy Night, Lord Peter is away on the continent, working for the Foreign Office. (You see, Harriet? Maybe he's good for something after all.) And, as Harriet is at Oxford trying to work on the case, she finds that she can't get him out of her head. (She even dreams about him, much to her annoyance.) What's worse, she literally runs into his nephew, the Viscount St. George, a silly but decently well-meaning young man who, after he finds out that she's the person he's heard lots about from his uncle, immediately starts calling her Aunt Harriet.
The part of the play that I think probably sealed my like for these characters (and the play on the whole) was when Lord Peter comes back to Oxford for a few days, and he and Harriet go window shopping in the town. One of the stores they stop at has a set of ivory chessmen in the window, and, and they catch Harriet's attention. Lord Peter, like the gentleman that he is, offers to buy them for her.
Now, Harriet didn't ask for a well-off, quirky aristocrat to fall in love with her, save her life, hang around, and fly to her rescue at a moment's notice without her even asking for it (Have His Carcase), and she's certainly never been interested in his money or anything like that. If she wanted something she'd get it with her own money, thank you very much.
But , as things have been changing lately, and Harriet has learned things about Lord Peter she never knew, in a burst of charity, she allows him to buy her the ivory chessman. I can't remember all the details, but she either has the package sent to her room or drops it off, and she and Lord Peter go off again and do something else.
When they return to her room, she finds that all of the ivory chessmen except one have been removed from the box and smashed on the floor.
And the strong-willed, independent Harriet Vane starts crying. I wish I could quote the conversation right (because it was amazing), but as she's crying Harriet says something like, "I loved them, and..you gave them to me," and this upsets Lord Peter, who says something to the effect of "If you'd said 'You gave them to me and I loved them', that would have been all right, but you had to say 'I loved them, and you gave them to me.'" My reaction to this? I was crying, as well. Because the ivory chessman that marked such an important development in Lord Peter and Harriet's relationship had been ruthlessly smashed before they could even use them.
The other part that I just have to mention is that at one point towards the end, the Poison Pen starts targeting Harriet directly, and Lord Peter worries for her safety in case things get any uglier than they already are. So he buys her a dog collar for her to wear around her neck so that it'll be harder for her to be strangled. (There are reasons why I like this character so much. XD) Harriet promises to wear it, and it ends up probably saving her life when she's attacked, just like Lord Peter feared.
Some time after this, Lord Peter has to leave again, and things begin to come to a head at the college. And, at the very moment when Harriet at last realizes just how much she needs Peter, he isn't there. She calls embassy after embassy, and he's always just left.
But it's because he's already on his way back to the college. He's solved the mystery, as he always does, and upon his arrival he identifies the "Poison Pen". Everything is cleared up, and everyone can go on with their lives.
But, before they leave Oxford, Lord Peter has one last thing to do. He proposes to Harriet one last time--and in Latin, no less. And, after five long years of Lord Peter respecting Harriet's feelings, keeping his distance, and graciously accepting each of her refusals...Harriet accepts him.
Now for the play itself.
The acting was very impressive. In two hours and twenty-something minutes the only real mistake was when Harriet starting saying "unbeastly and generous" instead of "beastly and ungenerous". And it was all so believable, and really swept me up into the story. And the thing that's wonderful about this theatre in particular is that it's tiny, and the actors often come up and down the aisles and even stand in them sometimes, and it all almost feels like you're participating in the story along with the characters, which is something you miss when you're watching a movie. It's true that in plays the amount of special effects is greatly limited, but on the flip side it's amazing how much they can do without them. And it's just so much fun watching actors live.
Overall, Gaudy Night was just...so amazing. The acting, the set, the costumes, the props, the story-- everything was a much higher quality than I was expecting (shame on me). In short...
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| I don't normally use GIFs, but this was just too perfect to pass up... |
I couldn't stop talking about it practically all the way back home in the car. And of course as soon as I got home I dug the Dorothy L. Sayers miniseries out of the DVD cupboard, and the rest is history.
~Kellyn~
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