Review by Simon Jenner, August 18 2025
“My good opinion, once lost…” So how do you return from that piece of existential stuffing? “Am I to cast myself as the villain in my own story?” Naturally, Mr Wickham has all the best jokes and a few waltzes too. An Original Theatre project, Lukis’ own Being Mr Wickham starring him and directed by Guy Unsworth returns after its original run ending at Jermyn Street last year, till August 30th.
Passing sixty, the incorrigible Adrian Lukis wondered what the subject of his 1995 TV portrayal might be doing at the same age. Quite possibly dead. Indeed Wickham’s chances are as endless as a turn of a card, or of this card Lukis. Or of other novelists like P.D. James.
Adrian Lukis Photo Credit James Findlay.
Over an hour, there’s revelations though no twist. Lukis relies on his audience knowing Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, at least the Andrew Davies cut. The latter Wickham is still (surprisingly) with the same Mrs Wickham he married with a large bribe and menaces from Darcy. Lydia has locked him out of their bedroom for locking eyes with a married woman. So Wickham has the diminutive drawing-room to himself. Inevitably there’s updates. Inevitably too we hear of Wickham’s early life alongside Darcy retold with advantages: to set the record crooked, or straight, as we decide. The most telling is a schooling with plot-point that’s tossed nonchalantly overboard (I use the term advisedly).
What Lukis manages with exquisite timing is to insinuate a rogue where a sociopath lurks. Tellingly, Lukis has Wickham quote reams of Byron. It might seem a warning, but this dash of lyricism delivered with vintage regret, paradoxically further assuages. Taking up Austen’s powers of depicting someone who could charm even Elizabeth Bennett isn’t so much the challenge now, with so many Wickhams depicted; Lukis the definitive one. Rehabilitating Wickham in Wickham’s own eyes though, deciding how much Wickham can be released like Puccini’s Gianni Schicchi from Dante’s bonds of hell or purgatory, is a subtle act.
Lukis suggests at least partial injustice, though his charm layers Wickham so plush you wonder how much is plausibly true, or where self-delusion might shade to knowing lie. Lukis’ performance glides over a dissolute life after being (as he relates) denied his ‘living’ as a vicar. There’s a couple of shocking acts and a savage vignette of Waterloo. Wickham’s experiences are offered at face value, with no gradations of falsehood. There’s a distracted arc of telling that lands, eventually, in pantaloons. Of age the outworn truism that “it comes to us all” drops like a handkerchief at a duel no opponent shows up to.
Lukis delivers a few delicious volte-faces, lending the sense that these at least are plausible. The least spoiler is that Mr Bennett is still alive, whilst Mr Collins grows fatter and angrier.
A lockdown project originally livestreamed in 2021, Being Mr Wickham has developed over the years. Libby Watson’s elegant set has too, and it’s a visual delight. Now designed for intimacy, it’s a run of pale eggshell, slightly worn Regency panelling with neatly-paced convex mirrors. They’re like winks to the audience’s self-esteem, who see themselves reflected as bulbous as Victorian dignitaries. And even a set of windows at an angle, occasioning Wickham’s frantic hopes of another elopement opposite. A brief window on the present stirs the past. Faded Regency’s all fronted with furniture marking the march of years: early-Victorian tables and the inevitable decanter of brandy, the only thing that ages well.
Adrian Lukis Photo Credit James Findlay.
Lukis does too, though Wickham’s tricked us again. Despite the publicity image he’s long sloughed his scarlet uniform, appearing as a cravat-dangling dandy. Lukis trails – no drags – clouds of inglorious Regency puff into the straitened mores of the 1840s. Johanna Town’s lighting plays midnight shadows, where Max Pappenheim’s sound discreetly conjures the deceived Georgiana trailing arpeggios at her fortepiano. Are we to believe Wickham’s take on this tinkle of innocence?
A darker vein lurks. A 75-minute, probing alter-ego quoting Byron might have released something worth burning: like Byon’s memoirs in the grate, cited here. Lukis chooses not to distress Wickham’s descent into respectability that Austen metes out; though her hint of marital enmity is softened. Wickham plausibly suggests why, though I miss the devil wearing scarlet. Nevertheless, it’s a delight. There’s nothing more charming or endearing in the West End this summer.
Producer Tom Hackney and Alastair Whatley for Original Theatre, Production Manager Callum Finn, Stage Manager Penny Foxley, Hair and Make-Up Kadine Watson-Thompson, Prod LX/Programmer Molly Stammers, Production Co-ordinator Lisa Friedrich, Head of Marketing Emma martin, PR Alison Duguid PR, Artwork Designer Rebecca Pitt Promotional Photography Michael Wharley, Rehearsal & Production Photography James Findlay.
Adrian Lukis Photo Credit James Findlay.