The Shaw Fest turns 42

Under
new artistic director Jackie Maxwell, the Shaw Festival opened its 42nd season
with what looked like a typical line-up of five plays — typical, that is, of
recent seasons, but hardly traditional.

            Their world-class ensemble again
brings dazzling aplomb to a Broadway musical of questionable value. Once more,
a resident director re-interprets a classic G. B. Shaw play with enough
startling innovation to set orthodox Shavians’ teeth on edge. This year,
another infrequently performed Shaw play gets a nifty revival, and another
Canadian play is presented in keeping with the festival’s recently altered
mandate — it was not written during Shaw’s lifetime, but is about Shaw’s
times and contemporaries (though I don’t know that Shaw knew about the Lizzie
Borden case, or cared). There’s also another new version of a modern drama
classic in an iffy translation.

            The
aviatrix on the program cover for Shaw’s Misalliance is
upside-down, possibly in reference to the play’s zany reversals of
expectations. But it’s also too accurate a representation of director Neil
Munro’s deliberate inversion of the playscript.

            I know that Misalliance is talky, unrealistic, and giddily disorganized. But
Munro has his actors continually pretend to be reading from playscripts on
podiums. The entire set and floor are covered with Shaw’s words. All entrances
and exits are preceded either by walls that spin around or by impossibly
self-opening doors. Instead of writing notes, actors have to spell them out on
a kind of Scrabble board, with what look like mah-jongg tiles. And a valuable
ceramic piece that gets knocked down and broken is changed into a sculpture of
Shaw’s head. The mother then kicks the playwright’s sculpted face across the
floor.

            It’s all very playful, but its
comment amounts to a declaration of contempt for Shaw’s script. At any rate,
these distractions and refusals to play the lines as written make it impossible
to follow the argument or give a damn about what is going on.

            Peter Hartwell’s designs are
bare-looking and too unfurnished for a wealthy man’s house, but they’re mostly
done in by the conceit that they be covered with words. A swing is lowered on
ropes for conversations in the library. A “portable Turkish bath”
(which is in the script) is instead a
trapdoor in the floor, but I don’t know what a portable Turkish bath is
supposed to look like, anyway.

            Seasoned performers do what they can
with the production. Michael Ball’s dry Lord Summerhays is amusingly unfazed by
the goings on. Lorne Kennedy’s wealthy underwear manufacturer with “a
superabundance of vitality” gets a great deal of comedy from his
character’s constant enthusiasms — most of them at cross-purposes. The
ultimate bored femme fatale, a Polish acrobat/aviatrix, is hilariously played
by Laurie Paton. And tall David Leyshon, peculiarly cast as the little, weak,
spoiled son, gets laughs with his squeaky-voiced tantrums, curling his writhing
body on the floor.

            Sharon Pollock’sBlood Relations has
been a popular Canadian play since 1980, perhaps because of the continuing
interest in the story of Lizzie Borden, who “took an axe and gave her papa
40 whacks,” etc., in Fall River, Massachusetts, in 1892. Pollock’s
treatment of the infamous tale is unique, in that in her version, The Actress
visits Lizzie in 1902, then plays Lizzie when their discussion turns into a
reenactment of the events leading up to the murder. Miss Lizzie plays Bridget,
the maid, in the 1892 scenes, and therefore remains enigmatic about her guilt
or innocence. We see her only as Bridget and as a very composed, resigned woman
in 1902. The Actress (the real Lizzie Borden did have a post-trial relationship
with the New York actress Nance O’Neil) gets to play the passionate girl driven
to murder. I’m not sold on the theatrical wisdom of this device, but it does
allow a fragmented view of the woman and of the events.

            In this accomplished revival of Relations, directed by Eda Holmes,
William Schmuck’s beautiful designs show a household within a building-frame
that encloses and partly shelters it. Andrea Lundy’s lighting helps maintain
the sense that we’re getting revealing, real peeks into an unreal, partly
hidden event. Laurie Paton is strong and telling as The Actress/Lizzie. Jane
Perry has compelling dignity and mystery as changeable Miss Lizzie.

            Nora McLellan makes Lizzie’s hated
stepmother Abigail a complex woman, none too bright, but sometimes persuasively
sympathetic. Lorne Kennedy is memorably forceful and slimy as Abigail’s
scheming brother. Michael Ball’s Andrew Borden is fascinatingly enigmatic
himself; sending mixed signals, Lizzie’s father does not make his real feelings
toward her transparent. Neither does Sharry Flett’s portrayal of older sister
Emma Borden, though her dialogue seems clear-cut. Anthony Bekenn shifts from
playing the married doctor who flirts with Lizzie to Lizzie’s eloquent, but
stereotyped, defense lawyer.

            I find the play’s ending
unsatisfying, but it’s generally a compelling evening in the theater.

            Ben Hecht
and Charles MacArthur’s Twentieth
Century is an old-fashioned, very theatrical comedy that is a lot of fun in
its own campy way. The great libretto/lyric-writing team of Betty Comden and
Adolph Green (On
the Town, Wonderful Town, Bells Are Ringing, Singin’ in the Rain) joined composer Cy Coleman (Sweet Charity, City of Angels, Barnum)
to turn that delightful comedy into 1978’s Tony Award-winning, absolutely
terrible musical, On the Twentieth Century. Directed
here with irresistible spirit and dash by Patricia Hamilton and choreographer
Valerie Moore, plus the fine musical-direction of Paul Sportelli, its Shaw
Festival production is its Canadian professional premiere.

            Why has it taken so long to get it
onstage professionally in Canada? Because the music is dreary and forgettable
and the lyrics almost as bad. Stunningly lit by Harry Frehner and designed with
a delightful art-deco curtain and increasingly cutesy sets thereafter (but
zippy costumes), this revival is about as good as you’re likely to see. The
cast sings and plays it deliciously, and the pacing is breakneck enough to
almost make you forget how banal the songs are.

            The playscript is, after all, a
romp, and these are very adroit players. Gary Krawford hasn’t the hammy glamour
that John Barrymore, Jose Ferrer, or Orson Welles (on TV) brought to the
play-version, but he’s funny and sings the role of scheming director/producer
Oscar Jaffee very well. Patty Jamieson is priceless singing and playing the
role of Lily Garland, the diva with whom Oscar needs to reunite. Despite her
gorgeous singing voice, for comic effect, Jamieson can get a nasal,
high-pitched speaking voice that sounds like an idiotic child.

            Evan Buliung makes Lily’s Hollywood
leading man, Bruce Granit, an idol in his own mind. He strikes self-enamored
poses that are funny enough to be actually endearing. Brigitte Robinson is
impishly silly as crazy heiress Letitia Peabody Primrose. And Patrick R. Brown
and William Vickers, as Oscar’s longtime henchmen, lead the splendid singing
ensemble in support of this winningly performed, bad musical.

            There are serious dramaturgical
lapses in Shaw’s first play, Widowers’ Houses, but it’s full of
interesting ideas and plays well in Joseph Ziegler’s open and honest direction.
With Christina Poddubiuk’s slyly adaptable sets and subtly revealing costumes,
and Alan Brodie’s dark, suggestive lighting, this revival is good-looking and
engrossing. Playing on the idea of slum-rentals, Widowers’ Houses presents rewardingly actable forebears of classic
Shavian characters in his later works.

            Peter Millard has a picnic with the
transition from low-born servant to nouveau riche con man made by the character
with the half-baked name of Lickcheese. He’s the sort we’ll see in full bloom
as Alfred Doolittle in Pygmalion. The
eloquent Sartorius, who turns morality upside-down by explaining the moral
necessity for substandard housing, is a clear precursor of Major Barbara‘s Undershaft, who defends the morality of war and
explosives, and a precursor of the Devil in Don
Juan in Hell.

            Stentorian Jim Mezon is a
predictably commanding Sartorius. Lisa Norton is perfect as his spoiled,
mean-spirited daughter. Dylan Trowbridge plays the initially upright, moral Dr.
Trench with suitably empathetic vulnerability. But on opening night, it seemed
to take most of the play for Patrick Galligan to get over his apparent
nervousness and settle into the role of Mr. William de Burgh Cokane, the stupid,
social-climbing Cockney gentleman.

            It may be Susan Coyne’s new
translation of Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters that made it seem
wrongheaded to me, and to drag through the final act. But I’m afraid that
Jackie Maxwell’s direction has to take some blame. As usual, her staging has an
evident rhythm and sense of composition that are impressive and artful. Much of
the movement in the last scene is choreographed to create a very musical sense
of atmosphere. But it seems that the characters this production is least
interested in are the central, titular three sisters.

            Admittedly,
pretty Tara Rosling seems lightweight and ordinary for the role of Masha. But
Masha is usually seen as womanly, very intelligent, and controlled. This Masha
seems to be a hysteric: She overreacts to visitors with extreme nastiness; and
when her lover leaves her at the end, far from the sad resignation I’m used to
seeing, this Masha crouches and bangs her head on the ground, screaming in
despair. At least she has real focus then: Masha spends most of Act II in
shadow, upstage, where we cannot observe her reactions to what is going on.

            By contrast, the
subordinate role of Natasha, the weak brother’s vulgar wife, is highlighted in
a potent performance by Fiona Byrne, who also seems to be lit more brightly
throughout. She is surprisingly loud and attention-getting in her scenes as a
nervous fiancée who is insecure about her behavior. And she shouts her
antagonism at the appropriately soft and sensitive oldest sister, Olga, the
spinster schoolmistress. If Natasha isn’t the star of this play, no one told
Ms. Byrne that she isn’t.

            I liked Kelli
Fox’s subdued Olga. She plays with dignity and persuasive integrity. But
Caroline Cave, as Irina, continues to seem beautiful and low-level convincing,
without having the inner-illumination required of a major ingénue role,
especially one of Chekhov’s radiant ingénues. Peter Krantz’s mean, eccentric
Solyony is more dominant and involving than is usual for this role. So is Jeff
Meadows’ Baron.

            I can’t fault
actors for being good enough to make more of their roles than usual, but I
wonder about the balance in direction. Kevin Bundy’s Vershinin, Masha’s lover,
is strong and attractive. Ben Carlson almost makes me like the spineless,
selfish brother, Andrei. Most of the ensemble are skilled and effective. But
the usually superb David Schurmann is downright hammy as Dr. Chebutykin in
overwrought scenes that I have to blame on direction.

            The concept is
clearly dark tragedy with odd snippets of broad comedy. Sue LePage has created
such opulent sets and costumes at Shaw and Stratford that I have to assume
these richly designed, but dark and dreary, ones are Maxwell’s idea. The house
is so plain and unadorned that one interprets all that longing to return to
Moscow as, at least in part, a desire for some color, comfort, and ornament.
And Kevin Lamotte’s lighting is seldom so dark and dim. It’s a polished Three Sisters, but not a pleasure to watch.

The Shaw Festival takes place at Niagara-On-The-Lake, Ontario,
Canada. G.B.
Shaw’s Misalliance plays at the
Festival Theatre through November 2; Sharon Pollock’s Blood Relations plays at the Royal George Theatre through November
30;Betty Comden, Adolph Green and
Cy Coleman’s On the Twentieth Century plays
at the Royal George Theatre through November 2; G.B. Shaw’s Widowers’ Houses plays at the Court
House Theatre through October 4; Anton Chekhov’s Three Sisters plays at theFestival
Theatre through August 2. Tix: $42-$77 Canadian
dollars (currently $30.50-$55.92 US). For info
and tix, call 800-511-7429 or visit www.shawfest.com.

This article appears in Jun 4-10, 2003.