The Shaw Festival, despite playing second fiddle to those Shakespeare-loving masses that trek down Highway 401 to visit the Stratford Festival each summer, is celebrating its 50th season and is making a serious stab at wooing younger theatre-goers. It’s a fine strategy that should bolster the Niagara-on-the-Lake festival’s chances of getting even better over the next 50. Congrats to them, but as they say, on with the show. In this case, reviews of two of Shaw’s shows — surprisingly weak productions given the excitement this season presents.
Present Laughter is not one of Noel Coward’s best. It is a dated play that hardly seems worth doing. Many of the lines fall flat (“There’s something awfully sad about happiness” is a good example, and there are several dozen others). When the clearly autobiographical main character, Garry Essendine (played with far less charm and wit usually displayed by the often-fabulous Steven Sutcliffe), describes another man as having “as much sex appeal as a piece of haddock,” one wonders if this was written by the funny playwright/actor who was considered the epitome of wit through most of the middle of the 20th century.
Is this really the same Brit who wrote such semi-classics as Hay Fever, Private Lives and Blithe Spirit? Most of this play falls flat.
Most of Stratford’s greatness has been captured by (most of) its productions of Shakespeare, and we have usually been safe in looking at the Shaw Festival with the same hopes for glory with its productions of George Bernard Shaw’s plays.
But Misalliance, an early play but a pretty darned good one, is not given the kind of production that it deserves, this time around, even if it is directed by the usually superb Eda Holmes. As in most of Shaw, one can be talked to death or to life by its outrageously witty and super-articulate and super-smart characters. The main role of John Tarleton, thank heavens, is beautifully performed by Thom Marriott, one of Shaw’s finest actors, and his rattling off of profound, if occasionally silly, philosophical thoughts is sheer joy. And another of my favourite Shaw performers, Tara Rosling, is also a delight as a Polish aviatrix who crashes her plane through the roof of the Tarleton mansion. Of course, moving this 1910 play to 1962 is silly enough, but having a 1920s plane hang from the rafters of that mansion throughout its second half is just “plane” bad (pun intended).
Is the Shaw Festival having an off season? Maybe not, as such plays as Shaw’s pleasing The Millionairess and Ibsen’s powerful Hedda Gabler are yet to come — along with Ragtime and other goodies. There is still much to get excited about this summer.