When I first heard that the Shaw Festival was staging an early comedy by W. S. Gilbert of "____ and Sullivan" fame, I assumed that it would be early in style as well as in skill. See how wrong you can be?
It was my turn to be surprised when I discovered that Gilbert actually wrote nearly 50 plays, not including the dozen or so operettas with Sullivan as composer. Engaged is thus part of a much more significant element of the author's total output.
The detailed programme notes provided by the Shaw highlight the indebtedness of the operettas to such earlier pieces as the highly successful Engaged -- and the equal similarity of the much later classic The Importance of Being Earnest. Well, proving such connections is a delightful impossibility, so I'll just leave it to stand that the similarities undoubtedly exist, and look at this performance instead.
But there are a couple of observations to be made about the script first. Like all Gilbertian satirical nonsense, this play takes place in a totally imaginary world which resembles the real world in only external details. Within that imaginary world, the most ridiculous behaviour becomes not only expected but respected. Also, the nonsense is at all times congruent with its own outrageous rules of behaviour and action.
Thus, it should come as no surprise that everyone's suitability for marriage in this play is determined by their wealth, or that the one person in the play with substantial means is also blessed -- or cursed -- with the unstoppable urge to propose to every woman he meets. (Oddly enough, he never seems to face a breach-of-promise lawsuit, the dreaded legal entanglement so often used by P. G. Wodehouse in his comic novels.) Nor is it a mere coincidence that the play begins in Gretna, the village ambiguously located on the border between England and Scotland, where eloping couples contracted marriages under Scottish law by simply declaring each other to be husband and wife, in front of witnesses.
For a nutty, off the wall piece like this one, the designer-director team of Ken MacDonald and Morris Panych is just the ticket. MacDonald has made a positive virtue out of the cramped stage of the Royal George Theatre by designing sets of gigantic cartoonish cut-outs coloured in bright pastels: monstrous thistles in Act I and impressionistic flowers in Acts II and III.
The first obstacle many in the audience encountered was in trying to understand the broad Lowland peasant accents of the first characters to appear: Maggie Mcfarlane (Julia Course), her mother (Mary Haney), and her would-be fiance Angus Macalister (Martin Happer). An accent like this is not often to be heard in the North American theatrical world, and these three all did it full justice. Even as one who has travelled frequently in Scotland, it took me a couple of minutes to adjust!
The first outsiders to appear after Angus forces a train to stop are Belvawney (Jeff Meadows) and his fiancee Belinda Treherne (Nicole Underhay). Belinda in particular comes across just like the heroines of half of the Savoy operas: self-centred, self-consciously sweet, and a melodramatist who never uses two words when twenty will do. She is the first in the play, but hardly the last, to declare that, despite her romantic attraction to Belvawney, money will decide whether she will marry or not. After marvelling at her skill in some of the heaviest dramatic roles of the repertoire, what a delight to see Nicole Underhay undertaking such giddily comical material (and she does it very well, no surprise there).
The central figure in the ensuing lunacy now appears: Cheviot Hill (Gray Powell). Cheviot loses no time in proposing to Maggie, and to Belinda, and the fun is well and truly under way. Powell has a whole range of daft actions that he undertakes each time his memorized proposal speech begins to make its way out into the world again. He brushes the hair back from his forehead, plants one foot out in front with bent knee, and begins lifting that foot up and putting it down again like an impatient race horse. By the third or fourth time you see this routine it's impossible for the audience to stave off the giggles.
One other key figure who appears in the second act is Minnie Symperson (Diana Donnelly), yet another woman who becomes the object of Cheviot's attentions. Donnelly's gentle, sweet young lady is a perfect foil to the more vehement Belinda, who proves to be an old friend -- naturally.
The story that proceeds to unfold is as complicated and twisted as only a Gilbert could make it. It includes multiple proposals, the complications brought on by a Scottish marriage which Cheviot didn't realize he was making, the appearance of the three Scots as house servants in London, the whole question of whether Belvawney or Minnie's father will get the one hundred pounds a month, and the issue of who will get beaten up by the fierce Major McGillicuddy.
It's very much to the credit of Panych and his actors that all these incredible and impossible contortions in the plot came across so clearly and seem so believable and even normal. Just as laudable is the comic timing in such scenes as the abortive wedding, where Belinda liberally helps herself to the cakes set out for the feast, or the ridiculous scenes where Belvawney turns his evil eye on Cheviot to make him behave himself.
Engaged may be a ridiculous comedy, but it's also a revealing satire on a social yardstick far too often wielded in our world today -- money. In that sense, it's certainly never likely to become dated or seem untimely when revived. And this Shaw Festival production is both skilfully performed and hilariously amusing. Highly recommended.
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