FringeReview UK 2026

Being Mr Wickham

Tom Hackney and Alastair Whatley for Original Theatre

Genre: Adaptation, Biographical Drama, classical, Comedic, Costume, Mainstream Theatre, Short Plays, Solo Play, Theatre, Theatrical Storytelling

Venue: Chichester Festival Theatre, Minerva

Festival: FringeReview UK

Low Down

Review

Anyone who’s seen this before is in for a surprise. Passing sixty, the incorrigible Adrian Lukis wondered what the subject of his 1995 TV portrayal in Pride and Prejudice might be doing at the same age. Quite possibly he’s dead. So what is he doing in 1845, in the stuffy age of Victoria? Leering out of a window to see if the girl across the street will elope? That sets the decanter racing, even a throb of the old blood. An Original Theatre project, Lukis’ own Being Mr Wickham starring Lukis and directed by Guy Unsworth arrives at Chichester Festival’s Minerva Theatre till January 24 on a third annual tour; after two runs in 2024 and 2025, ending at Jermyn Street.

It truly is a surprise for those who’ve seen this production. The original show ran for 59 minutes, and this according to my half-hunter, clocks in at 74. Those 15 minutes have something to so with the amplitude and breath the Minerva allows the magnificent set. More though, it’s in what Lukis adds to the affect, the pace of delivery over Persian rugs, and timing – where the minutes still flash by. Here Lukis  gestures to the Minerva’s horseshoe; he plays the rogue and the audience is the gallery.

There’s a catch in the throat this time though, and more than a catch. Here, Wickham lands more of his soul. Like a fictional flounder perhaps, where he swears it’s bigger than it was. It makes a superb show something more. There’s mastery, as Lukis delights in placing a line, pacing a pause through the hush, and hooking you.

“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.

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. Indeed, there’s a faint parallel with the fate of Wickham’s friend Denny. Only this is more believable, and Denny too emerges, spitting out a tooth after his rescue from a brawl by Wickham on their first meeting.

There’s revelations though no twist but one of feeling. Lukis relies on his audience knowing Austen’s Pride and Prejudice, at least the Andrew Davies cut, and doesn’t repeat too much ground. The latter Wickham is still (surprisingly) with the same Mrs Lydia 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 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.

That decanter releases a tale deciding the character of two boys. The most telling is a schooling with plot-point that’s tossed nonchalantly overboard (I use the term advisedly). The pay-off comes late. Though one-liners pepper the entire script like grapeshot. Indeed “a blunderbuss of boys scattered over the moors” comes early.

Tellingly, Lukis has Wickham quote reams of Byron. He begins and ends exquisitely with “So we’ll go no more a-roving” which gloves over a faded Wickham more than the still-youthful Byron. Indeed an anecdote of recently-dead Harriette Wilson (hence we know it’s 1845) and Byron neatly places Wickham in his own opinion as a nearly-man. It’s not unjust. Quoting Rousseau ironically as well as citing Byron reveals Wickham as cultured as he’s rakish.

Indeed the premiss of the show resembles Rochester’s ‘The Maimed Debauchee’ which Austen might have found too much had she known it. But referencing Wilson’s infamous 1825 memoirs, Wickham’s outrage at the destruction of Byron’s own memoirs by the same year releases one of his (and surely Lukis’) most passionate literary moments: “the pages one by one consigned to the fire. The incineration of genius.” You feel it’s been perpetrated on one of his tribe.

It might seem a warning, but this dash of lyricism delivered with vintage regret and a dash of reserve port, 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. What Lukis manages with exquisite timing is to insinuate a rogue where a sociopath lurks. One who will hear no word against Elizabeth.

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. There’s a touch of Robert Nye’s Falstaff about Lukis’ creation. But no Persian rug-pulling reveal.

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; particularly in the last six months. Libby Watson’s elegant set has too, and it’s a visual delight. To a dance of Persian rugs, a sofa stalks out front. Lukis now spends a few flounces in it. Upstage, 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 in the Minerva 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 that inevitable decanter of brandy, the only thing that ages well.

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. And Wickham’s successful trade alongside Lydia, which keeps her in hats? You will not believe it, so I’ll refrain from divulging it either.

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, but a more emotional one triumphs. A 75-minute, probing alter-ego quoting Byron might have blazed like Byon’s memoirs in the grate but not touched as Lukis does. Originally Lukis chose not to distress Wickham’s descent into respectability that Austen metes out; though her hint of marital enmity is softened. Wickham plausibly suggests why, flickering at the devil wearing scarlet he was. But Lukis now lets out something more profound at the precise moment the couple across the street decide their fate. There’s nothing more charming or endearing on the south coast this week, month or season. In the afterglow of Austen’s 250, it’s an outstanding must-see.

Associate Sound Designer Joe Dines, 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 Jodie Rabinowitz, Production Co-ordinator Lisa Friedrich, Head of Marketing Emma Martin, PR Alison Duguid PR, Social Media Manager Paul Jennings for Hero Social, Artwork Designer Rebecca Pitt Promotional, Photography Michael Wharley, Rehearsal & Production Photography James Findlay.

Published January 22, 2026 by Simon Jenner