Judith Swift, background, directs actors Tony Estrella and Karen Carpenter in the upcoming production of Oscar Wilde’s Ideal Husband at the Gamm Theatre in Pawtucket.

The Providence Journal / Sandor Bodo

Judith Swift is a big Obama backer. But now that he has been elected president, she worries that voters will expect too much from him, that they’ll figure he’ll be able to wave a magic wand and fix all our problems.

And that is a lesson she has learned in part from directing the latest offering from Pawtucket’s Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre, Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband. The show opens today.

Although the play deals with blackmail, treason and political corruption, it is also about the way Sir Robert Chiltern, a respected member of the House of Commons is put up on a pedestal by his wife, held to be the perfect husband and politician. But setting a person up like that only prepares them for a fall, said Swift, a longtime theater professor at URI.

“My feeling is that with Obama we are going to see a big period of disenchantment. I think there will be a little honeymoon, but the disenchantment will be the biggest we’ve seen in many presidents from the past, because people are expecting so much from him. They are expecting him to rise them up. They are confusing the soaring oratory with what is impossible to accomplish.”

The thing that most interested Swift about Wilde’s play is the way Lady Chiltern stands by her man, like so many political wives who are at the arm of their husbands when they have to admit to affairs or other political indiscretions. Think of Larry Craig and Eliot Spitzer.

In the play, Swift was struck by how Lady Chiltern, the politician’s wife, proclaims her husband incapable of a dishonorable act; that he is essentially perfect. There’s no stain on his character, in her mind. But in truth, Sir Robert is guilty of selling a state secret about the purchase of the Suez Canal to a stock investor. Sir Robert made his fortune with that illicit money, and his wife’s rival, Mrs. Cheveley, has the documents to prove it. She plans to use them to blackmail him into supporting a fraudulent scheme to build a canal in Argentina.

“We’ve all got stains upon our character,” said Swift. “We can’t be human without them.

On the other hand, Swift has been interested in watching Michelle Obama, who was so “authentic” during the campaign.

“She was cautioning people not to revere a human being, and I thought that was refreshing. She said he’s just a guy, he’s not a perfect person.

“Then you look at someone like Cindy McCain, who is sadly android-like in her slavish worship of her husband. And you saw Bill Clinton do the same thing with Hilary. Suddenly he changed from being Bill Clinton, who used to be a popular president despite his peccadilloes, to someone behaving like a fish wife. He was out of control in his support of her.”

Wilde finished An Ideal Husband in the winter of 1894, and it opened the following year at the Haymarket Theatre in England. But three months later Wilde, who was married and a father, was arrested for being a homosexual; for “gross indecency,” as the charge stated. His name was taken off the play, even though it was incredibly popular. An Ideal Husband was published in 1899 without Wilde being listed as the author.

Swift said in a way the play echoes Wilde’s secret life as a gay man.

“You can see his fear about being found out in the way husband and wife talk to each other. Think about living with a secret for 20 years, fearing every day of his life someone would find out. He couldn’t tell his wife because of what it might do to her idea of his perfection.

“I’m constantly reminded of these women, and you can line them up, standing there holding hands with these men who have been elevated to the point where there has to be a fall.”

Ideal Husband is really a play about hypocrisy in society, where class is everything.

“The play really does a brilliant job getting at class and ideology, at hero makers and hero worshipers,” Swift said.

“And it really does resonate with me about Obama. Look at the mess we’re in. Who in four years can possibly straighten this out?”

“And all of that adds up to the oxymoronic nature of the play. You can take any noun and add it to the title — an ideal wife, an ideal candidate, an ideal president. But it’s all oxymoronic. An ideal husband by its very nature is a contradiction in terms.”

Oscar Wilde’s An Ideal Husband opens today in previews at the Sandra Feinstein-Gamm Theatre, 172 Exchange St., Pawtucket. Tickets are $24-$39. Call (401) 723-4266.

cgray@projo.com