An Ideal Husband

REVIEW - An Ideal Husband, Sheffield Botanical Gardens Published Date: 25 June 2010 By Martin Dawes SO Oscar Wilde did not put in an appearance as had been hinted before Heartbreak Productions' performance of his play. With just five actors doubling and trebling up on parts you did wonder how they would have portrayed him. Budget cuts and slimmed down workforces are in the news, but these traveling actors have been doing it for years and still providing first class entertainment with small casts. It was an ideal summer's evening in lovely surroundings before an audience of 260 as the company opened its new season of three plays in Sheffield. Director Peter Mimmack framed this one with new scenes showing the servants below stairs commenting on their masters. And there were the usual Heartbreak hallmarks - interaction with the audience, Music Hall and songs. You felt Oscar would have approved of this mucking about with his classic. The play, sparkling with wit and quotable one-liners, provides a surprisingly apt comment on modern political life although set in Victorian times. Deceit, corruption and duplicity are always with us. The cast - Andrew John Tait, Bethany Thompson, Gabrielle Douglas, Helen Rynne and Oliver Hume - all turned in splendid performances with evident enjoyment and enthusiasm. Perhaps special mention should be given to Mr Tait for his engagingly physical performance as the fop Lord Goring - Wilde wrote himself into the part - who had most of the best lines. Do try and see it. As Wilde himself says: "Always pass on good advice. It is the only thing to do with it."------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ SEMAINE "Andrew John Tait was our speaker for the aggressive synthetic voice Spike in our research project SEMAINE. The work involved speaking hundreds of meaningless sentences from the Wikipedia, many of which contained difficult-to-pronounce words, in a highly consistent expressive tone. Andrew was a pleasure to work with. He was always 100% concentrated, managed the difficult pronounciations very well, and had no difficulties maintaining a consistent speaking style throughout the recordings. We are very happy with Andrew and would like to work with him again should the opportunity arise". Dr. Marc Schröder, German Research Centre for Artificial Intelligence (DFKI GmbH)