If you haven't caught on yet, then I have to tell you bluntly that I prefer a classic play to almost anything experimental, and I would rather hear a well-turned phrase than any amount of gutter language. These are matters of purely personal taste, and hence very unprofitable for argument.
To put it even more clearly, George Bernard Shaw is one of my favourite playwrights. I've now put myself thoroughly to the bad with a large portion of the theatre community, and the theatre-going public, because Shaw has become very unfashionable in both camps!
At any rate, for those with the courage and perseverance to dig a bit, Shaw still possesses ample rewards. Yes, his plays are very talky -- that's unarguable. But in all that talk lies concealed the real reason for my admiration: Shaw was the unexcelled master of all masters at creating humour by demolishing the expected outcome of any situation.
So, while many dismiss him as a "conventional" playwright, that term should be handled with much more caution because Shaw's primary purpose is always the undermining of "conventionality" in all its forms.
That's my preamble. This post deals with the first three plays I saw at the Shaw Festival this year:
[1] The Millionairess (George Bernard Shaw)
[2] French Without Tears (Terence Rattigan)
[3] Misalliance (George Bernard Shaw)
All three will be dismissed by many as conventional. But, in my opinion, only the Rattigan play is truly so. In a way, it plays like a forerunner of Neil Simon. The author takes a situation involving relatively normal everyday people and milks it for comedic effect by highlighting differences among the characters' personalities. It's funny. But it's a bit slow to lift off the ground in the first act (a flaw in the writing, it is the work of a young and relatively undeveloped writer) and the best of the fun comes after the intermission. The dependably strong and tight company of the Shaw Festival perhaps worked a bit too hard at trying to make Act 1 "go" but later settled in and gave a fine ensemble performance in which everyone's contribution was essential, and the whole in the end was certainly greater than the sum of its parts. Fluff, to be sure, but amusing and well-executed fluff all the same.
Misalliance is an earlier Shaw play (1909) and he was still more than half a political pamphleteer at this stage of his career. Alas, this is one of the plays where the dramatist didn't keep the orator under enough control. Polemics take over from dramatic action from time to time. But when the dramatist got into the saddle, the fine art of undermining expectations was going full throttle. All the best laughs in Misalliance (and there are many) come from this kind of reversal of convention. With the setting of the play brought forward into the 1960s, the company exploited these opportunities to the full. Only Ben Sanders I felt overplayed his part. In his hands the effete aristocrat Bentley Summerhays became a shrieking drama queen, too far over the top for the rest of the show's good.
The most successful for me were the women. Catherine McGregor as Mrs. Tarleton was the conventional nouveau-riche wife of the Sixties to perfection, so when her reversals came she managed the considerable feat of undermining her entire character without stepping out of it. As the dangerous and seductive Hypatia Tarleton, Krista Colosimo struck a wide variety of emotional and dramatic notes. And Tara Rosling as Lina Szczepanowska was simply magnetic in the role of the mysterious woman who drops into the life of the Tarleton family with shattering impact (this is a multi-level pun for those who haven't seen the play; after you go you'll get it!) Her every line was punched out with a mittel-Europa accent that in no way obscured her words or her feelings.
This brings me to The Millionairess, which I thought the most successful by far of the three. As a script, it is unquestionably that. It was 25 years since Misalliance and Shaw had successfully dismissed the pamphleteer. He'd also learned to dispense with a long introductory exposition scene. The Millionairess hits the ground running, and keeps right on going nonstop. The other two plays are very much ensemble pieces, but this one stands or falls by the title character. And I would simply say that Nicole Underhay was born to play this role. I couldn't have wished for a more effective interpreter of the complex and multi-faceted richest woman in the world, Epifania Ognisanti di Parerga Fitzfassenden. (How in heaven's name did Shaw dream up these names????) Underhay was abrasive (very), abrupt, energetic, articulate, elegant, and vulnerable by turns -- and yes, the script does call for all of these qualities and more besides. She also manages to make ever-new the resounding delivery of her 13-syllable name each time she introduces herself to a new character (she always omits "Fitzfassenden" because she hates her husband).
The real amazement is that she makes you care for her, and care about what happens to her. How can this be possible when Epifania (etc. etc.) is on the face of it such a disagreeable person? The simple answer is the masterly way Shaw shows us how all the other people in her life, one way or another, are simply not adequate to keep up with her immense physical and psychological energy (until the Egyptian doctor appears). As she expresses her continual frustration at being trapped among people who are not her equals, Underhay's performance is a genuine tour de force. Although all the rest of the cast were equally effective, I have to mention the wonderful parade of bemused looks on the face of solicitor Julius Sagamore (played by Kevin Bundy) when this tornado comes roaring into his life in the opening 30 seconds of the play. Every time she undercuts his expectations, he comes up with another splendid variation -- a textbook display of "101 faces that express puzzlement".
So: three very good productions of three very entertaining scripts, one of which is (for my money) truly a great play. Two more from the Shaw coming in a few days, and then I'm taking a bit of a layoff (unless I find something else to take in....)
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