This season's production of Bernard Shaw's The Philanderer marks the first time the Shaw Festival has staged the work with the original (discarded) third act and without the third act as published.
The Philanderer was Shaw's second play, and the one in which he found his voice as a playwright. I've commented before about the times when Shaw the political pamphleteer takes over from Shaw the dramatist, and how those passages are generally deadly in the theatre. His first play, Widowers' Houses is heavily beset by that flaw. But in The Philanderer the pamphleteer is content to let his ideas bubble to the surface as an integral part of the relationships among the principal characters, and the play is all the better for it. Mind you, it's certainly easier to do that when the principle ideas of the piece have to do with a key relationship issue: the morality (or otherwise) of the institution of marriage and the laws which enshrine it into society. Much of the comedy (and it is funny) arises from Shaw's favourite device of throwing you the reverse of what would "normally" be expected in any situation.
It's also a kind of early study for many later Shaw plays, presenting a scenario in which a man who prides himself on his "advanced ideas" struggles to avoid being pinned down to either one of two very strong-willed women -- one quite conventional, and the other anything but. For additional amusement, there are the fathers of the two women -- again, with one coming across as totally conventional and the other seeming so on the surface but rather different underneath.
The performance opens in silhouetted lighting with loud noises of sexual ecstasy proceeding from the stage. The stage direction in the script reads, "A lady and gentleman are making love to one another." Of course the phrase carried other connotations in Shaw's time from the ones it carries today. In other plays this kind of modern interpretation might be disastrous. But here it totally makes sense, since the entire first act of The Philanderer arose out of an unpleasant experience connected with a passionate love affair which Shaw had. Not only that, but it's abundantly apparent from the script that Shaw's characters aren't very honourable in their relations (to use another olde-world phrase!).
Designer Sue LePage's set is a handsome drawing room in a well-to-do home, but not heavily overdecorated -- which is a sensible choice, given what is to happen. Between Acts 1 and 2 a song about smoking (a complete social no-no for women of the day) is performed by a man dressed and bearded as Henrik Ibsen, flanked by two women in mannish dress. This device plays off all kinds of ideas thrown out in the coming act. But it also allows the three main units of the drawing room to be uncoupled, rotated, and relinked behind the singers to form the equally handsome set of the Ibsen Club's library. After the intermission, the curtain rises on the dining room of Dr. Paramore's house, 4 years later, and the backdrop is now a mere skeleton of the units that formed the first 2 sets. Very suggestive. Also suggestive are the overturned chairs that litter the floor. Not only suggestive, they are also annoying as everyone studiously avoids noticing them or mentioning them or even becoming aware of them until -- finally -- someone picks one up, dusts it off, and sits down on it. Those chairs are annoying not least because I kept wondering when someone was going to do something with or about them! Talk about pulling focus.
That was the one serious flaw in the otherwise admirable staging of the piece. Director Lisa Peterson obviously has a flair for the stage picture, and used it to the full. The pace of the show was excellent, too, running smoothly and fluently without overspeeding. Only once or twice were lines lost when a character inopportunely moved or turned while speaking.
The central trio of characters are the first to appear. Grace Tranfield (played by Marla McLean) and Leonard Charteris (played by Gord Rand) are the couple making love as the lights aren't coming up. Late as the hour may be, they are all too soon joined by Julia Craven (Moya O'Connell), another of Leonard's amours, and the fat is in the fire. These three actors delivered excellent performances of three characters who are, at the heart, stubborn and selfish to a fault. One of the tricks to making this play work at all is the need to keep all three of them sympathetic, and this the company certainly accomplished. O'Connell in particular executed a whole series of rapid physical movements to prevent Rand escaping her, to great comic effect. This whole scene was played right on the edge of "too much", but only once did I get the feeling that it went over the edge and then the feeling was only momentary.
With the arrival of the two fathers, the central group was completed. Reliable as ever, Michael Ball played Joseph Cuthbertson, the drama critic, neatly centred on the tightrope between his staunch principles and his failure to live by them. Ric Reid was marvellous as Colonel Daniel Craven, the mustache-blowing old sol-jah of the Empi-ah to the life. One of the greatest comic highlights of the show was the moment in the last act when these two men, coming at the situation from opposite directions of thought, suddenly realized that they had arrived at the same idea and walked off together, echoing each other like Tweedledum and Tweedledee!
That left, among the major characters, Dr. Percival Paramore (Jeff Meadows). I'd have to re-read the play, and in particular read the original third act (which was new to me). Was it just the actor and director, or does the script in fact turn him from an ineffectual dodderer in Act 2 into a kind of a tragic hero in Act 3? That's how the role was played, and the change in tone was sufficiently powerful to make my eyebrows keep jumping up at the things he said, and the way he said them.
The final moments of the play, when the relationship between Leonard and Julia is brought forward once again, are powerful and (like all of Shaw's best) contain an unexpected reversal which in this performance is beautifully prepared and perfectly timed.
One other delightful comic touch must be mentioned: Kristi Frank as the Ibsen Club's page, roller skating through the Club's library in a completely dignified manner!
Take the show as a whole, it was extremely entertaining and thought-provoking in equal measure. Definitely well worth anyone's time!
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