Four At The Shaw

Performing Arts & Entertainment in Canada, Wntr, 1999 by Keith Garebian

The first four productions at the current Shaw Festival reveal that old defects remain: the ensembles lack consistent quality and style, and the directors continue to be erratic. Yet, although beautifully articulated theatre is rarely achieved, there is enough to entertain the eye and mind.

To take the least first, Christopher Newton's production of Rebecca at the Royal George shrivels the Gothic tone and mood, despite an impressive set by William Schmuck that manages to suggest a spatial depth despite a narrow width. This is certainly not Manderley and not anything like Hitchcock's classic film, and the dramatic climaxes never come off, principally because the "leads" are rigidly wan and uncharismatic. Peter Krantz appears to enact the haunted Maxim de Winter through clenched cheeks (both in the face and in the buttocks). Severn Thompson is credible as the drab, mousey, anonymous second wife, but her monotonous tone fails to elicit pathos. Sharry Flett's Mrs. Danvers lacks a subtext and has a parched rather than a sinister quality. My pleasure was minimal and came only through the comedy of manners from the duo of Brigitte Robinson and Anthony Bekenn as Beatrice and Giles Lacy.

Things are better in Neil Munro's version of You Can't Take It With You, a rerun from last season, with some cast changes, though in trying to accent the seriousness in this farce, Munro actually staggers the pace in the first act. When Kaufman and Hart concocted this comedy about an eccentric family in 1936, America needed a massive sense of humour to get it through the Depression and threat of impending global war. The Sycamore family includes a mother who's taken up playwriting ever since a typewriter was wrongly delivered to the house; a husband who manufactures fireworks in the basement with the help of the iceman who has stayed on since his last delivery; a daughter who is a ballerina manquee, a pirouette away from therapy; and a retired grandfather who hasn't paid any income tax and who occupies himself by playing darts, raising snakes, and attending university convocations. The old boy, full of twinkle-eyed mischief, represents the casual philosophy of the old world American individualist. No wonder that his granddaughter in love with the son of a Wall Street banker feels it hopeless to introduce her suitor to this benignly crazy household where even the maid has her own eccentric boyfriend who wants his welfare money without having to line up for it.

Although the cast does not whip up the farcical elements to their fullest, it has enough discipline and technique to make the comedy inoffensively buoyant. The set-pieces come off gloriously, particularly the second-act game of mental association with the Kirbys who have come to dinner on the wrong night, only to have their most intimate boudoir secrets uncovered. And the pyrotechnical climax is splendidly achieved in Sue LePage's wittily crowded set.

But all things come back to Shaw, as indeed they should in a festival named after him. And here things don't always go right, though Jim Mezon's Court House production of the disquisitory Getting Married is brightly colourful and succeeds in holding our interest even though it promises climaxes that it never delivers.This is a piece of almost pure talk, and little action or plot. But what talk! The simple setting is a sort of elegant pavilion or gazebo, festooned with ribbons and backed by topiary hedges, all the better for the comic chorus of discoursing characters. A bishop's sister-in-law is about to get married, but the groom can't abide the prospect of being held responsible by current law for his wife's debts. Shaw cleverly offers satiric representations of Church, Army, and Landed Gentry to show how marriage mirrors social organization. Various perspectives are offered by the dignified Bishop, his wife's sisters (one who persistently rejects her persistent suitor; the other who thinks nothing of marrying a man while inviting her ex-husband to live with them), a celibate chaplain who is a moral extremist, a greengrocer who knows that people wouldn't get married if they were aware of the complications, and Mrs. George, the mayoress, known for her wisdom especially about men.

It is possible to imagine a better ensemble than this one, especially as the General sounds hoarse and Mrs. George flat in her big "trance" scene, but there is ample pleasure to be had in almost all the other performances - particularly Barry MacGregor's as Reginald, the aggrieved, abandoned husband; Gordon Rand's as Sinjon, his facetiously volatile rival; and Sarah Orenstein's as Lesbia, less Edwardian old maid and more independent spinster.

In the biggest test so far this season, Tadeusz Bradecki takes on Heartbreak House, and although he doesn't disgrace himself the way he did with Mrs. Warren's Profession two seasons ago, he continues to disregard textual values for his own East European idiosyncrasies. Heartbreak House stands for England in a period when the nation was heading for doom, but it is also (in the words of Margery Morgan) "the underworld of dreams and symbols." Its upper class Edwardian characters are not simply comic types or grotesques; they have a cosmic relevance beyond a pointed political allegory. Fourteen years ago, Michael Levine designed the house as a ship, under the partial navigational control of Douglas Rain's Shotover. In the present production, Rain reprises his role - not as a Lear or Dionysus or Prospero, but as an important member of the ensemble. However, his environment is not even half a house. Peter Hartwell's set is a composition of fragments, with screens, wheels, and propellers. The ensemble is left to its own devices, so the actors play in various discordant styles. The result is farce, with only a few strains of surrealism and only the merest streaks of credible emotion. There is no sense of genuine heartbreak - Shaw's tragicomic tone shares some of the blame - and the apocalyptic climax is rather diluted. The power of women is asserted, but there is little sense of Shaw's disillusionment about imperial England unmoored and floating dangerously towards disaster.