The Countess (play)

The Countess
Poster for the original production of The Countess at the Greenwich Street Theatre (signed by the author and members of the cast)
Written by	Gregory Murphy
Date premiered	1999
Place premiered	Greenwich Street Theatre, New York
Original language	English
Subject	Ruskin's marriage breaks down when his wife Effie meets John Everett Millais
Genre	Period piece
Setting	London and Scotland in the 1850s

The Countess is a play written by American author Gregory Murphy. Based on one of the most notorious scandals of the Victorian era in Britain, the play depicts the break-up of the marriage between John Ruskin and Effie Gray.

Written in 1995, Murphy's two-act drama premiered in New York in 1999, being performed at several Off-Broadway venues. It later had a successful run in London, and has since been performed around the world.

Characters

• John Ruskin
• Effie Ruskin
• Elizabeth, Lady Eastlake
• John Everett Millais
• Mrs Ruskin
• Mr. Ruskin
• Crawley

Plot

Based on one of the most notorious scandals of the Victorian Age, The Countess is a true account of madness, cruelty and obsession, and perhaps one of the greatest love stories of its time. In 1853, preeminent art critic John Ruskin, his wife, Effie Gray, and his friend and protégé, the Pre-Raphaelite painter John Everett Millais, departed in high spirits for the Scottish Highlands. When they returned to London four months later, Millais' hatred for Ruskin was exceeded only by his passion for the beautiful, young Mrs. Ruskin. What John Everett Millais did not know, could not have known, was the terrible truth at the core of the Ruskin marriage. A secret which when revealed through the persistence of Lady Elizabeth Eastlake, renowned writer of the period and close friend of Effie Ruskin, would rock London society and forever change the lives of Millais and the Ruskins.

Productions

The play was first performed at the Greenwich Street Theatre, New York in a production directed by Ludovica Villar-Hauser. It was soon transferred to the Samuel Beckett Theatre and then the Lamb's Theatre. The production ran for 634 performances.^[1] The original production of the play starred Jennifer Woodward as Effie and James Riordan as John Ruskin, with Kristin Griffith as Lady Eastlake.

In 2005 Villar-Hauser again directed a production in London, starting at Guildford's Yvonne Arnaud Theatre, later transferring to the Criterion Theatre. Nick Moran starred as Ruskin, Alison Pargeter as Effie, Linda Thorson as Lady Eastlake and Jean Boht as Mrs Ruskin.

The Countess was published by Dramatists Play Service. It has subsequently been performed around the world.^[2]

Reception

The Countess received critical acclaim when it premiered in the spring of 1999 with the New York Times calling the play "…serious…wonderfully witty…erotically charged." "splendidly directed" and "the entire cast is excellent".^[3] The New York Post wrote that The Countess has "sex scandal appeal", is "nicely acted" and a "Damned good tale".^[4] Some critics of the London production were less impressed. Michael Billington called it "curiously stolid" and objected to what he called the "forelock-tugging framing device, set in Windsor Castle" in which Effie meets Queen Victoria.<ref name = "bill>Billington, M, "The Countess: Criterion", The Guardian, 8 June 2005</ref> Ian Shuttleworth also objected to the "clunky" framing scenes, writing that the play "is a standard triangular story with several cumbersome attempts to spice it up."^[5]

The Countess sparked some debate over its depiction of John Ruskin, and the resulting controversy led the New York Times to publish "A Twisted Victorian Love Tale That Won't Die Out" written by Lucinda Franks.^[6] Billington said that "Murphy takes the stock line that Ruskin was a domestic bully who pontificated about art and beauty while recoiling from living flesh", but the play gave no indication of Ruskin's radical political ideas.<ref name = "bill/>

Plagiarism dispute

Some years after its first production The Countess generated its own scandal when playwright Gregory Murphy entered into a protracted and public lawsuit with Emma Thompson who had written a screenplay based on the same historical events as the play. Murphy argued that Thompson's screenplay drew on his own play, or possibly his cinematic treatment of it, which had been pitched to Thompson's husband Greg Wise. Murphy recounted his meeting with Thompson in a first person article written in London's Daily Mail entitled "The day I sat in Emma Thompson's kitchen and accused her of stealing my movie".^[7]

Thompson eventually won the battle and the film Effie Gray, starring Dakota Fanning, was released in 2014.

References