Interview: Siubhan Harrison on The Country Wife at The Southwark Playhouse

With this original adaptation, Morphic Graffiti thrust William Wycherley’s The Country Wife into the excesses and seductions of late 1920’s London: a city exploding with a heavy mix of jazz, gin and scandalous affairs.

We caught up with Siubhan Harrison, who stars alongside Richard Clews and Eddie Eyre as Alithea, to find out more.

You’re starring in The Country Wife at Southwark Playhouse, what can you tell us about it?

The Country Wife is a restoration comedy by William Wycherley written in the 17th century about a man who claims to be a eunuch in male society in order to sleep with women… it’s a bawdy, comic romp which we’ve now set in the heady era of the 1920s age of decadence, booze, drugs and parties!

How does the move to 1920’s London affect the plot?

The move to the 20s reflects the importance of society, the hedonism, and importantly the rise of female liberation, women’s rights have started to change the power levels and we start to see that shift mirrored in sexual liberation too.

The original was quite rude! Can we expect the same from this production?

I think you’ll be in for a titillating evening! I don’t think we shy away from that side!

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What’s your favourite thing about your character Alithea?

My favourite thing about Alithea is her lack of filter! She says exactly what’s on her mind!

How have you been getting to know your fellow cast mates?

Being in a company requires you to be open, you don’t have long to get to know each other before diving into another world. It’s exciting learning about them and from them followed by important social interaction in the pub afterwards!

You were at Southwark Playhouse last year with Working, how does it feel to be back, and in such a different production?

Southwark Playhouse is incredible in the way that the space changes so completely in such a short turn around!!! They put on such varied and brilliant productions. Last time I was there in a construction box playing a factory operator, a nanny and an air hostess surrounded by music and dancing and this time I’m in the 1920s, in a heady gin-soaked society getting married; involved in a love triangle and dancing with stuffed birds!

The Country Wife is at Southwark Playhouse 28th March – 21st April 2018.