The Stage

The Earthly Paradise

Published Monday 29 November 2004 at 12:10 by Aleks Sierz

It is 1871, and William Morris and Dante Gabriel Rossetti, old chums from the Pre-Raphaelite Brotherhood, decide to spend the summer at Kelmscott Manor, a spartan Elizabethan pile deep in the Oxfordshire countryside. Joining them is Jane, Morris’s wife, and painter Rossetti’s model and muse. Before long, sex - the worm in the bud - begins to gnaw at this earthly paradise.

Peter Whelan’s history play is a sturdy piece of craftsmanship, solid and deliberately old-fashioned - not unlike one of Morris’s designs. It is also a genuine attempt to understand the sensibilities of the Victorian age, and Morris comes across as a very English idealist, a man who wants his wife not only to be free but also to be happy, while Rossetti is a portrait of perversity.

Whelan paints a sharp contrast between youthful idealism, with its evocation of Arthurian legend, and the realities of adult life. He also points out that when Morris went to Iceland to explore the sagas that fuelled his fantasies, he discovered evidence of the possibility of a classless society, a key moment in his political awakening.

Director Robert Delamere and designer Simon Higlett avoid the trap of setting The Earthly Paradise in a Morris-style boudoir and have instead opted for a distressed-look refuge.

As Morris, Nigel Lindsay is great mix of cuddly bear and emotional strain, while Alan Cox gives Rossetti a convincingly paranoid look. As Jane, Saffron Burrows is part confused village girl, part determined new woman.

An enjoyable evening that is easy on the senses.