THE IMPORTANCE OF SEEING SHAW Notes from a Festival Newbie By Ron Ehmke I confess. Although I’ve lived in the shadow of Ontario for more than two decades, I somehow managed to avoid the Shaw Festival the entire time. It wasn’t a conscious slight, more a matter of time and logistics that kept the annual affair at Niagara-on-the-Lake off my personal radar. But near the end of last summer I finally found myself sitting in the Festival Theater, and roughly halfway through the first act of The Royal Family, I realized I’d made a terrible mistake in holding off for so long. Here was a play whose authors—George S. Kaufman and Edna Ferber—were familiar to me, but not the work itself. Not quite a warhorse, not quite an obscurity, Family was a revelation, both as a text and as a beautifully realized production. While I still have my reservations about the Shaw’s glossily packaged approach to theatergoing as high-culture Event (an aesthetic which pervades every aspect of the overall experience, from publicity materials to lobby displays), I gladly acknowledge now that these folks know what they’re doing, and do it with Broadway-caliber professionalism. The slickness of the Shaw’s production values had me fearing what Peter Brook once described as "deadly theater," but what I saw once the curtain raised was as vibrant and organic a performance as one could possibly hope to witness. Needless to say, I vowed to return as often as possible. It had always been clear to me that the Shaw is a festival in the truest sense. Seasons don’t consist of random plays chosen strictly for their box office potential; they’re carefully arranged mosaics whose individual elements complement each other in myriad ways, with G. B. Shaw’s work and worldview as an omnipresent, if sometimes obscure, focal point. The 2004 season, for instance, is anchored by two of its namesake’s plays, Pygmalion and Man and Superman. One of the leads in the former, Jim Mezon, also directs Three Men on a Horse, which was co-authored by George Abbott, who directed the original Broadway production of Pal Joey, the festival’s version of which runs on a second stage in tandem with The Importance of Being Earnest, written by Shaw’s contemporary, Oscar Wilde (whom Shaw considered ?hateful? and "sinister"). If you’re so inclined, you can approach the whole curatorial endeavor as a game: Six Degrees of George Bernard Shaw. Scholarly yet accessible program notes help tease out still more strands of interconnection, some conceptual, others merely fun. All very interesting in theory, but how successful is the festival at sustaining its appeal from production to production? With three of the current season’s shows under my belt, I can happily report that what felt like love at first sight was not just a one-night stand; I feel a long-term relationship in the making. Pygmalion (Festival Theatre through November 27) Thanks to its permanent residence in high-school textbooks and a certain rather well known musical adaptation, the saga of upper-crust linguist Henry Higgins and Cockney flower-girl-turned-belle-of-the-ball Eliza Doolittle is easily the blockbuster in the Shavian canon. Its extreme-makeover premise is so familiar that even folks who can’t tell their Plays Pleasant from their Plays Unpleasant know the story by heart. While the play’s brand-name status may be a boon to ticket sales, it doesn’t make a theater company’s task any easier. Just shy of its centennial, Pygmalion challenges cast and director alike to shake off the dust of history and reawaken the script’s power to surprise, provoke, and delight. Fortunately, director Jackie Maxwell (who is also artistic head of the entire festival) and her actors are ideally suited to the business at hand. Theirs is a crisp, multi-textured production, fully alert to the nuances of Shaw’s plot and the precision of his language. Jim Mezon and Tara Rosling shine in the lead roles. Mezon’s Higgins exudes the confidence of an aristocrat and the arrogance of a tyrant. The great joy of his performance is watching his body language adapt to one social milieu after another: stiff and professorial in public, slumped and slippery at home, nearly infantile when visiting his dowager mum. Rosling’s Eliza holds her own against this self-important bully, but it’s clear that his taunts are taking their toll on her psyche. Act III’s pivotal unveiling of her still-evolving new persona before a test audience of society types is a masterstroke. Eliza’s hyperformality and periodic lapses into her previous street-smart self are hilarious, but the laughter has a dark edge: are we laughing with the vulnerable innocent, or at her? Mezon and Rosling are ably supported by Lorne Kennedy (as Higgins’s conflicted accomplice, Colonel Pickering), Simon Bradbury (Eliza’s ne’er-do-well father), Nora McLellan (Higgins’ servant/secretary), and Patricia Hamilton (definitive as Henry’s mother). Maxwell’s riskiest move is her decision to incorporate bits of Shaw’s typically detailed stage directions into the production, delivered by actors as they make adjustments to the set from one scene to the next. She has also included material from the published script Shaw had deemed unstageable. I have no idea what Shaw would think of such liberties, but I loved them: just the thing to breathe new life into what, in lesser hands, might have descended to the level of museum piece. The Importance Of Being Earnest (Royal George Theater through Dec. 4) Once more, an overproduced standard finds new vitality. Director Christopher Newton (Maxell’s longstanding predecessor as Artistic Director) doesn’t simply remind audiences how well crafted Oscar Wilde’s "trivial comedy for serious people" was when they first encountered it; he makes it sparkle. Like Maxwell, he has an excellent ensemble at his disposal, starting with Evan Buliung and David Leyshon as foppish Jack and Algernon. Fiona Byrne and Diana Donnelly play their lovestruck would-be partners, Gwendolen and Cecily. Collectively and individually, it is this quartet’s reckless enthusiasm that fuels the action. Newton’s approach is conservative; his touch is light but confident. Timing couldn’t have been easy to master in rehearsals, because nearly every sentence of dialogue packs a punchline: "I am really only eighteen, but I always admit to twenty when I go to evening parties." "Ignorance is like a delicate exotic fruit; touch it and the bloom is gone." And so on: it’s as if everyone onstage is, well, Oscar Wilde. Earnest unfolds at the Royal George, a far more intimate venue than the larger, newer Festival Theatre. It’s an ideal match for the play’s delicate but deadly wit. There’s something particularly timely about Earnest. Anyone who thinks that irony and self-conscious artifice are inventions of the post-modern era would be well advised to brush up on the script. "We live in an age of surfaces," Algernon’s aunt Lady Bracknell declares, a hundred years before the reign of MTV and Seinfeld. Three Men On A Horse (Festival Theatre through Oct. 29) Not everything the festival touches is a timeless masterwork. Consider this 1935 relic: prior to the current production, John Cecil Holm and George Abbott’s farce returned to Broadway in 1993 under the auspices of Tony Randall’s National Actors Theatre, with Randall sharing the stage with his one-time TV partner, Jack Klugman. Envisioning the Odd Couple in these proto-sitcom roles is all too easy: Randall as hapless Erwin Trowbridge, a greeting card writer with a gift for picking the winners of horse races provided he doesn’t actually bet on them, and Klugman as Patsy, leader of a trio of mobsters determined to channel Erwin’s talent into some easy money. Naturally Erwin has a whiny wife, a brother-in-law who hates him, and a boss who exploits him; naturally Patsy has a moll with a Betty Boop voice and a heart of gold. Three Men on a Horse isn’t just dated; The Royal Family is a relic of its time, too, but it’s a fascinating artifact, distinguished by hilarious wordplay, ingenious construction, and surprising emotional complexity. Three Men is ... a three-hour vaudeville routine. This is fluff, and everyone involved has as much fun as possible. Alas, I’m not convinced they’re up to the job. Affable Kevin Bundy doesn’t quite hit the proper note as Erwin. The colorful characters in his orbit—energetically embodied by such fine performers as Simon Bradbury (Patsy) and Anthony Bekenn (Erwin’s employer)—never transcend their one-dimensionality. Only Glynis Ranney as the moll exhibits much depth. Director Jim Mezon resorts to all matter of gimmicks to prop up a weak script, from curtain-raising gags to superfluous slapstick. I admire Mezon’s acting, but all the subtlety of his performance style seems to evaporate when he’s running the show. Still, two stellar productions and one mediocre one is a success rate I can live with. Three Men just means the honeymoon is over; now I’m ready to settle in and start getting comfy. Tickets and information about the Shaw season can be obtained by calling (800) 511-shaw or visiting www.shawfest.com Ron Ehmke, Spree’s Associate Editor, is a writer and performer. Back to the Table of Contents Back to Top