Fanfare, firsts, and a fabulous Richard III

On July 13,
1952, Alec Guinness stepped onto the stage of a large tent to play Richard III
in the first performance of Canada’s Stratford Festival. Exactly 50 years
later, Shakespeare’s Richard III opened at the
multi-million dollar Avon Theatre July 13, after the entrance of the Governor
General of Canada and after a very long standing ovation for Tom Patterson, who
conceived and founded the Festival.

            The original fanfare, still played
to open all performances at Stratford’s magnificent Festival Theatre, was
incorporated into the music score for this Richard
III.

            Earlier that afternoon, Stratford’s
just-completed Studio Theatre officially opened, with fanfares and ceremonies
and the first full performances of two brand new plays by young Canadian
playwrights, one of whom we saw that night acting a featured role in Richard III. And the night before,
Stratford completed the Shakespeare canon with the opening of its first full
performance of the last play Shakespeare worked on, The Two Noble Kinsmen.

            Written by William Shakespeare and
John Fletcher (we think), The Two Noble Kinsmen currently has a
large cast of gifted young actors, each a former participant in the Stratford
Conservatory. Stratford’s Young Company briefly performed a cut-down workshop
version of this play at the Patterson Theatre, then called the Third Stage, in
1985. Now Stratford revisits an old experiment to create a significant “first”
in North American theater history. What a pity that The Two Noble Kinsmen is such a god-awful play.

            It has some funny scenes, all
derivative and inferior to what they remind us of. As in A Midsummer Night’s Dream, we get untalented rustics trying to
impress to noble Duke and his followers outdoors and winning some money for
their foolish efforts. There are fights and posturings so melodramatic that we
giggle.

            And there are certainly noble
sentiments expressed. Most of the dialogue is fusty rhetoric, very declamatory,
and seldom accompanying any action. Some sounds unlikely indeed, like the warrior
duke and his guards exclaiming about how great-looking the Kinsmen and their
virile knights are. Dead serious, they sound like the comic Pandarus in
Shakespeare’s Troilus and Cressida when he simpers over Hector that “It does a man’s heart good” to see
a hero so handsome.

            The plot, such as it is, involves
two cousins, Arcite and Palamon, from ancient Thebes, captured in war by Duke
Theseus just after he married the Amazon Queen Hippolyta. Their jailer’s
daughter falls in love with Palamon, and after he escapes to the woods, she
follows him, goes mad, sings and babbles a lot about flowers, then almost
drowns and tries suicide. But no one tells her to get to a nunnery. Then the
two kinsmen embrace and reminisce affectionately about their youth together,
but try to kill each other because they are both in love with Hippolyta’s
sister, Emilia.

            Finally, the Duke has them come back
after a month and fight a duel, after which the winner gets Emilia and the
loser gets executed. So after Arcite and Palamon embrace and reminisce
affectionately about their youth together a couple more times, they try to kill
each other and Arcite wins. But just as Palamon is to be executed, Arcite is
brought in dying. He fell off his horse! So they embrace and reminisce affectionately
about their youth together. And the Duke and his Amazon go away, presumably to
bed, without even asking Puck to sweep up.

            David Gaucher’s designs include a
central horse head in the pool and odd, Asian-style costumes with armor and
leather that looks expensive. He says they reflect Oriental styles from the
10th to 15th centuries. Why I know not. The physical production is very
striking, with truly artful lighting by Michael J. Whitfield.

            The two new plays are about
pretense. Paul Dunn’s High-Gravel-Blindgets its title from Launcelot Gobbo’s
comic line that his father “being more than sand-blind” [is rather]
high-gravel-blind and knows me not.” An actor, Dunn played Launcelot Gobbo
in The Merchant of Venice last season
and thought about that clownish character’s telling his nearsighted father that
he, Launcelot, is dead. What a mean thing to do!

            But in this play, Lance, the
offbeat, gay young man who lives with a young woman in a crummy Montreal
apartment, greets a man at the door who says he is his father. But Lance’s
father abandoned him when he was a tiny child. So Lance denies being the son that
Gord is looking for, and says that Lance is dead. The complications rise from
there.

            Damien Atkins, a young
actor-playwright himself, plays Lance very amusingly, displaying considerable
talent for physical comedy. Stephen Ouimette plays Gord as a rumpled,
beaten-down alcoholic tamed by his wife. Kimwun Perehinec plays Jessica,
Lance’s sculptor friend. And Chick Reid is hilarious as Margery, the controlling
new wife. A professional Christian, Margery has come to Montreal for a
religious seminar. In the intimate new Studio Theatre, Richard Monette directs
this predictable play with sly comic characterization and makes it involving
and entirely enjoyable.

            The first act of Anton Piatigorsky’s
Eternal
Hydra is fairly intriguing. It presents a driven scholar, Vivian Ezra,
who is the literary agent for a legendary, deceased writer, Gordias Carbuncle;
the cynical old publisher, Randall Wellington Jr., whom she takes his novel to;
and a young black novelist, Pauline Newberry. Seen and heard only by the
scholar and by us is the spirit of the dead writer.

            In love with her vision of Gordias,
Vivian tries to negotiate the publication of his long-lost masterpiece, Eternal Hydra. It is a work of genius
about the meaning of life and all and all. Pauline is about to publish a second
novel centering on neglected African-American novelist Selma Thomas, who knew
Carbuncle in the 1930s in Paris. She has them meeting and having an affair.
Publisher Randall wants to get Vivian to write an introduction to Pauline’s
novel to create a tie-in to Carbuncle before publicizing Eternal Hydra. Each has conflicting agendas.

            Act II is much more predictable,
very pretentious, and interminable. We meet the real Gordias Carbuncle in Paris
in the ’30s and find that, like his name, he is entirely self-invented and
phony. We see what his real relationship was to the researcher-mistress who hid
his manuscript after he died, and what really occurred between him and the real
Selma Thomas. And we look at our watches a lot.

            The cast plays the tiresome piece so
well that it seems to move when it actually doesn’t. Chick Reid is touching as
Vivian Ezra and dynamic as Gwendolyn Jackson, Carbuncle’s researcher in the
’30s. Paul Soles seems typecast as the current, bright old publisher and as his
pioneering father back in the ’30s. Karen Robinson is glamorous and believable
as Pauline, the present-day novelist, and as Selma. And Stephen Ouimette gives
a cleverly layered, revealing portrayal of the enigmatic Gordias Carbuncle.

            Another returning Stratford alumnus,
Tom McCamus makes up for his disappointing MacHeath in The Threepenny Opera with an electrifying Richard III. His playful,
sardonic schemer is so self-amused at his villainy that he actually invigorates
the audience as well as the play. We laugh at him, with him, in fact, while simultaneously feeling creepy about the
horror of what we are being entertained by. McCamus is expressive and complex
enough, physically and in his delivery, that we can sense Richard’s
self-loathing even while he actually enjoys his outrageousness and nastiness.

            When he tells us about his plans to
destroy his brother, destroy the two innocent children, and destroy the
pathetic widow whom he woos and wins after killing her husband, his manner
isn’t conspiratorial. No, this crafty monster is bragging. And laughing. And
yet he seems to sneak a glance to see whether we disapprove.

            Martha Henry’s direction is daringly
theatrical but visually beautifully composed. She makes the powerful females
more significant opponents to Richard than are his political or military
rivals. Richmond may defeat him, but his antagonists at court who stand up to
him and revile him are Queen Margaret, widow of Henry VI, Queen Elizabeth, wife
of Edward IV, and the Duchess of York, his mother and mother of Edward IV and
Clarence.

            Diane D’Aquila plays Margaret not
just as expectedly strong, but with savage force more like Medea. Seana McKenna
plays Elizabeth initially with cold dignity but eventually with both fury and
biting sarcasm. And Lally Cadeau brings such humanity to the Duchess that one
feels her anger but sympathizes with her tragedy, mother to a monster
responsible for the death of his brothers.

            An entirely able, large and
distinguished cast enriches this very physically played drama. The fight scenes
are unreal but reasonably strongly felt. Richard takes some startling falls
that are both telling and unexpectedly funny. Scott Wentworth is more memorably
vivid as the dying King Edward IV than the victimized Clarence. Peter Hutt
seems to visibly shrink as his Duke of Buckingham moves from happy accomplice
to doomed, out-of-favor discard. And Aaron Franks has unusually commanding
presence as the murderer, Tyrell.

            Allan Wilbee’s almost abstract
designs have wonderful texture, and his huge, gnarled trees seem symbolic of
the entire drama. Louise Guinand’s lighting saves its effects for climactic
moments, and then delivers. But dominating the whole endeavor with showy
virtuosity, McCamus scores a triumph.

Stratford Festival: Shakespeare & John Fletcher’s The Two Noble Kinsmen at the Tom
Patterson Theatre to September 29; Paul Dunn’s High-Gravel-Blind and Anton Piatigorsky’s Eternal Hydra at the Studio Theatre to Aug. 10 ; Shakespeare’s Richard III at the Avon Theatre to
November 3; www.stratfordfestival.ca or 1-800-567-1600.

This article appears in Jul 24-30, 2002.