Veronica's smile fades to a thin frown as her eyes meet her new daughter-in-law, Larita. As mistress of the manor in 1920s England, Veronica (Kristin Scott Thomas) had expected her son John (Ben Barnes) to marry someone suitable to his aristocratic station. Instead, he returned from a whirlwind tour of France with an American bride who races in the Grand Prix-and wins. Larita (Jessica Biel) is brash and beautiful, gorgeously costumed and thoroughly unconventional. Worse, Larita is a woman with a doubtful past.
The new production of Easy Virtue isn't the first time Noel Coward's play was turned into a film. Alfred Hitchcock made it into a movie as far back as 1927. The writer-director of the latest version, Stephan Elliott (The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert), softened the stage play's sardonic edge in favor of its potential for champagne fizz comedy. His Easy Virtue is the latest entry in the "Masterpiece Theatre" genre of immaculately furnished British costume productions. The pleasure is less in the story than in drinking in the richly detailed setting.
The cast and screenplay (co-written with Sheridan Jobbins) elude one of the genre's chief dangers: thin caricature. We are meant to root for the free-spirited Larita and against the disapproving Veronica, but their characters are nuanced. Larita is often careless and Veronica is a loving mother, faced with keeping the estate together against bad economic odds and a husband who retreated from responsibility after returning from World War I. Jim (Colin Firth) goes about unshaven and disheveled, wearing a rumpled jacket and a knotted scarf where a necktie should be. For Veronica, his history of infidelity is an unpleasant fact of life to be endured. Like the English weather, the clouds come and go.
The dialogue is tart, clever and delivered with the sharpness of a fencer's thrust as Veronica mounts an insidious campaign against her unwanted daughter-in-law. EasyVirtue is a charming comedy for anyone who loves the humor of P.G. Wodehouse and Evelyn Waugh.
Opens June 19 at the Downer Theatre.
