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Act 1, Scene 1
Themes
Key
LitCharts assigns a color and icon to each theme in If We Were Villains, which you can use to track the themes throughout the work.
Fate vs. Free Will
Identity and Disguise
Love and Sexuality
Theatre and Corruption
Summary
Analysis
Early next morning, Oliver and Richard make their way from the Castle to the Fine Arts Building (FAB) for their auditions. Richard reassures a nervous Oliver and advises him to keep his feet planted while he performs. Internally, Oliver explains that fourth-years like his friends get to put on tragedies and histories, while the third-years perform romances and comedies, the second-years play small parts, and the first-years work behind the scenes. Students get cut from the program in large numbers every year. As third-years, Oliver and his friends put on A Midsummer Night’s Dream. Richard played Nick Bottom as an intimidating and unstable villain with great success.
Richard is kind to Oliver here, even giving him advice—a move that implies that, in accordance with Alexander’s casting, he doesn’t see Oliver as competition for a lead role. That’s saying something, given that Oliver and his friends have been competing with one another to even stay enrolled at Dellecher for three years. This fact helps to explain why roles and lines matter so much to the fourth-years: they’ve been critical to survival during their time at Dellecher. Oliver’s recollection of Richard’s show-stealing performance of a dark take on Nick Bottom, a bumbling and self-important weaver who’s usually played by an actor with strong comedic chops, underlines Richard’s skill and stage presence—he makes even comedic roles frightening.
Themes
Oliver thinks about how his friends have survived in the drama program for so long. He puts it down to their typecasts, neatly compartmentalizing each person. Richard is a powerful tyrant; Meredith is a sensual femme fatale (who’s dating Richard); Wren is an innocent ingenue (who’s Richard’s cousin); and Alexander is a sly villain. Filippa and Oliver are less easily defined, as Filippa is slightly androgynous and Oliver is average at everything. That leaves James, Oliver’s best friend, whom he considers the perfect charismatic hero. Oliver thinks of himself as a sidekick to James, but he doesn’t mind—he’s even possessive of his friendship, since James seems to be beloved by everyone. Oliver muses about James’s popularity: “everyone fell in love with [James] as soon as he stepped onstage, and I was no exception.”
The students’ typecasts are reductive—they define each student in just a few words. But despite their simplicity, the archetypes seem to follow them offstage and become part of their lives, and Oliver’s perception of his relationship with James is a major example of this. Oliver thinks of James and himself as having the same dynamic as their onstage characters, but James’s charisma and popularity don’t bother Oliver or make him jealous because he loves James, too. Here, he frames himself as just one of many people who are “in love with” James and the roles he plays, phrasing that might be deceptively casual—perhaps his feelings for James are stronger than he lets on to readers.
Themes
In the moment, Oliver waits for his turn to audition. He can hear Richard performing his monologue from Henry V through the walls. When Richard is done, Oliver enters the room, greeting Frederick and Gwendolyn, the directors of the program. Then he prepares to perform his monologue. Richard stays to watch him and offers him an easy smile, which Oliver takes to mean that Richard doesn’t see him as competition for a leading role.
Richard and Oliver’s relationship looks quite positive at this point in the novel, but even now, Oliver is a little uneasy. He senses that Richard’s kindness toward him is dependent on his sense of superiority—which at this early point in the story remains unthreatened.
Themes
