Monday 15 September 2014

Shaw Festival 2014 # 4: The Man Sadly Disarmed

My final show at the Shaw Festival for this year is another dear old favourite, Bernard Shaw's comedy Arms and the Man.  This is (I think) the fourth time I have seen the play staged.  Sadly, it came off as a rather weak entry.

Let me qualify that right away: it wasn't a bad performance.  At a theatre festival such as Shaw there is no such thing.  Directors, actors, designers and technicians all operate to the highest professional standards and thus every show is certainly a good one.  And there's the rub.  In reviewing plays at such theatres, it becomes easier to be hyper-critical about flaws that might pass unnoticed in less stellar company.

The script in the final act contains two key pieces of dialogue which in retrospect define the entire character of Raina Petkoff, the young woman at the heart of the story.  One is when she and the Swiss mercenary soldier, Captain Bluntschli, discuss her "noble attitude and thrilling voice" which she puts on to good effect when it suits her.  The other is where Bluntschli states that he thinks she is a schoolgirl of 17 years, and she contemptuously replies that he should learn to tell the difference between a schoolgirl of 17 and a woman of 23.

I take the trouble to mention these two script portions precisely because Kate Besworth, who played the role of Raina, and director Morris Panych, absolutely ignored them.  This Raina is a flappy, fluttery, frantic blonde schoolgirl whose voice rises to a screech far too often.  There is no sign at all of any kind of noble attitude, and the voice is never thrilling -- only grating.  This serious misfire is made more noticeable by the fact that her mother, Catherine (Laurie Paton), and her fiance, Sergius (Martin Happer), both get the noble attitude and thrilling voice exactly right, on cue, as needed.

It matters because the pretensions of so-called "civilised" people are one of the main targets Shaw aims his satirical skewers at in this script, and Raina is the main vehicle of those pretensions.  When she doesn't conform to the description of her in the script, a large part of the fun in the show disappears altogether.

Having said that, I then have to turn around and say that I very much enjoyed the way Besworth played her opening scene with Bluntschli (Graeme Somerville) where he climbs into her bedroom when being chased by his enemies.  The tone between the two of them is just right in this scene.  It's later in the play that Besworth goes over the top in quite the wrong way.  Somerville is an excellent Bluntschli -- reasonable, rational, calm and collected at all times -- even when he decides to surrender to his foes.

Laurie Paton is particularly excellent in the second act, as she describes her "civilised" way of life, complete with a new electric bell to summon the servants.  Martin Happer plays as good a Sergius as I have ever seen -- a dashing figure of romance with a commanding voice and enormous physical presence on stage.

Norman Browning is near-perfect as Raina's father, Paul.  In one scene, his wife (Catherine) says, "You would only splutter at them."  And Browning does splutter, and fume, and fuss, quite uselessly.  It's a fine reading of one of Shaw's most incompetent male characters.

The other bit of casting that worried me was having Claire Jullien as Louka, the maid.  The way the part is written (and it is a good part), Louka comes off most often as a young girl full of beans and vinegar.  Jullien quite sensibly played her as an older woman, thirty-something perhaps, ready to make her break and move on and up in the world.  It tipped the whole dynamic of her scenes in an unexpected direction but the choice worked very well.

I did grow a bit tired of Peter Krantz as Nicola, the servant who fancies himself engaged to Louka, but that's just because I don't much care for his slow, deep voice or his standard hurt-bloodhound facial expression.  He certainly did the part justice.

Designer Ken MacDonald's set was a gigantic cuckoo clock.  In the first two acts it's exterior could just as easily have been a mountain chalet, which is after all what a classic cuckoo clock represents.  But in Act 3 the clock was turned around, and we saw its interior, complete with giant-sized gears and wheels which revolved noisily whenever anyone opened the central doors.  I know, it was kitschy, it was cutesy, but it was funny and it certainly made people laugh (including me).  I can recall one occasion when the doors opened but the clock didn't do its thing, and I wondered if that was a glitch or intentional.

Charlotte Dean's costumes all suited the play, the place and the period (the 1880s in Bulgaria) ideally -- with one glaring exception.  Paul Petkoff's housecoat was a beautifully well-worn full-length dressing gown, obviously long loved and long lived it, but was that really the sort of garment that Raina and Catherine would have given Bluntschli in which to make his getaway?

Now, please don't get me wrong.  As I said before, this was (like all productions at the Shaw) a good, entertaining, and definitely funny show.  It's just sad to reflect that it could have been so much better with more attention to the words of the text from all involved.

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