Life Stages

Former Christ’s Hospital pupil Susannah Fielding returns to West Sussex this month, playing Margery Pinchwife in Chichester Festival Theatre’s production of The Country Wife

- Nione Meakin

IT’S not hard to imagine how Susannah Fielding won her latest role in Chichester Festival Theatre’s revival of William Wycherley’s Restoration comedy The Country Wife. If anyone is equipped to offer a fresh take on the 17th century tale of a randy rake and his nefarious means of seduction, it’s the 32-year-old, who excels in unexpected interpretations of well-trodden parts. What other actor has thought to imagine Portia from The Merchant of Venice as a vacant, blonde-wigged Valley Girl, as she did in her award-winning turn in the Royal Shakespeare Company’s Las Vegas-set 2014 production? “I feel female actors have a huge responsibility to bring depth to characters that may not have been given a real voice before,” she comments.

True to form, Susannah’s version of Margery Pinchwife – the eponymous wife of the play’s title – will be a living, breathing woman and not the dumb caricature of tradition. “Margery is sometimes played as stupid but I think she’s naïve and certainly she’s much more cunning than she initially seems. She’s hungry for life – which most young women are.” Director Jonathan Munby’s production will be set in contemporary times and Susannah thinks the bawdy play, which was banned for a time due to its explicit content, still has the potential to shock modern audiences. “People were much more sexually free at the time it was written but we’ve been through many periods since when that wasn’t the case – and especially for women. It will be interesting to see how audiences react today.”