The Countess

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Play Opened 7 June 2005, Closed 9 July 2005

Criterion Theatre Piccadilly Circus, London

The visionary critic, the Pre-Raphaelite artist, and a sexual scandal that rocked Victorian society.

In 1853 the celebrated art critic John Ruskin, his wife Effie, and the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais depart in high spirits for the Scottish Highlands. When they return four months later, London is already beginning to whisper of the woman one man calls mad, and the other... The Countess.

Gregory Murphy's sumptuous and passionate new drama The Countess is based on one of the most notorious scandals of the Victorian age. The Countess is Gregory Murphy's first play. It was critically acclaimed in New York, where it ran for 634 performances. The London production of The Countess stars Nick Moran as 'John Ruskin' and Alison Pargeter as his wife 'Effie' with Damian O'Hare as 'Millais', Gerald Harper as 'Mr Ruskin', Jean Boht as 'Mrs Ruskin' and Linda Thorson as 'Lady Elizabeth Eastlake'. It is directed by Ludovica Villar-Hauser who also directed the acclaimed New York production.

"The Countess, by the American playwright Gregory Murphy, at the Criterion, is a wonderful, evocative piece of theatre dealing with the events leading up to the annulment of the artist and critic John Ruskin's marriage. As Ruskin's cruelly neglected wife, Effie, Alison Pargeter is extraordinarily moving, and Nick Moran makes a fine job of the frigid, repressed and hopelessly aesthetic artist." The Sunday Telegraph

"This love triangle is clearly a classic Victorian romance with the patriarch misportraying his wife as a neurotic while himself being unnaturally prim. The trouble is Ludovica Villar-Hauser's production is, in the main, shockingly fifth rate. Pargeter, to her credit, manages to be sturdy and pained. But O'Hare can be tiresomely impetuous and Moran is merely lame. The Pre-Raphs would, surely, have laughed themselves sick over the set's faux plastic rocks and Murphy tells the story with all the smooth progression of a square wheel - ironically throwing in a mini-lecture on artistic perfection." The Independent on Sunday

"There's only one reason for going to see The Countess: Alison Pargeter. She's a megawatt young actor. In EastEnders, she put in a memorable few episodes as the earnest cherub who became Sarah the stalker. As Effie, the wife of John Ruskin who ran off with John Everett Millais, she suggests innocence, shrewdness, determination and collapse with a tilt of her head. But she's in the most dismal production to hit the West End this year." The Observer