Arthur Wing Pinero (1855-1934), an indifferent actor, was an expert writer of farces. His fame began in 1885 with The Magistrate and continued into the 20th century. He wrote The Cabinet Minister in 1890. The audience at its premiere was confused as to how they were meant to take a play whose underlying seriousness seemed at odds with its billing as a farce.
The cabinet minister’s wife and son have run up so many debts that she has to borrow from a moneylender. In order to get out of his blackmailing clutches, she acts on secret government information in her husband’s private papers. She buys shares in the Suez Canal and makes a fortune. Five years later Oscar Wilde would tell a similar story in his An Ideal Husband far more dramatically and with greater wit.
I saw the play twice many years ago and didn’t find either of the two different productions funny enough. The script is poorly constructed and has far too many characters. I was keen, therefore, to see what the director Paul Foster and his cast would make of it at The Menier Chocolate Factory Theatre, hoping for some judicious cutting of the text and for less mugging by the actors.
Nancy Carroll’s adaptation has cut eighteen roles to thirteen, which is still too many. There is too much coming and going. The actors are constantly entering only immediately to exit. The play is a mess and still not funny enough; apart from odd moments, such as when two lovers (George Blagden and Rosalind Ford) have a comic tiff and try to strangle each other
The critical opinion that Pinero’s farces are more worthy of revival than his serious social problem plays has been going on for far too long and it is time it was challenged. The Second Mrs Tanqueray in 1893 established Pinero as the leading dramatist of his day. A huge commercial success, it was historically as much a milestone in British theatre as Tom Roberston’s Caste had been in 1867 and John Osborne’s Look Back in Anger would be in 1956.
It would be good to see not only The Second Mrs Tanqueray, but also Mid-Channel and His House in Order revived. The latter ran for 430 performances in 1906.
To learn more about Robert Tanitch and his reviews, click here to go to his website. 
