In a much anticipated special event, the Shaw Festival has staged the full-length version of George Bernard Shaw's philosophical epic comedy Man and Superman for only the fourth time in its history. This year's production fully lives up to its three predecessors, and the strong cast sets the sparks flying all over the stage throughout the performance.
Although both my heavyweight description and the show's 6.5 hour running time (including several intermissions) may deter many potential theatregoers, I've always found that this play stands at the strongest point of Shaw's career and is one of his wittiest as well as most thought-provoking creations.
I've attended at least two previous Shaw Festival productions of the complete play: in 1977, starring Ian Richardson, and in 2004, starring Ben Carlson. (I may also have witnessed Michael Ball tackling the role in 1989 but my memory is less clear on this point.) This is the only show which I chose to attend at this year's Shaw Festival.
For those not familiar, a few brief programme notes follow. Informed readers, feel free to skip.
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Shaw prefaced the play with his customary lengthy essay about its genesis, themes, and ideas. In this essay, he laid the "blame" (if you can call it that) on his friend, Arthur Bingham Walkley, who had urged him to "write a Don Juan play." What's most intriguing about the resulting unique creation is the way in which Shaw took the well-known theme of the libertine male seducer of women and turned it on its head, creating a new trope in which (to quote his own words in the play): "Woman is the pursuer and the disposer; man, the pursued and the disposed of."
Although Shaw's plays consistently generate much of their comedy by setting up conventional expectations and then reversing them, this play consistently goes one stage further and subverts the entire convention of the story it purports to re-invent for the twentieth century.
The result is precisely as Shaw described it in his essay: a conventional, modern (in its day), three-act comedy onto which the author grafted a lengthy additional act. In that long third act, the protagonist lies down to sleep in the Sierra Nevada of Spain, and has a dream in which Don Juan, Doña Ana, the Statue, and the Devil convene in Hell and hold a philosophical debate about existence in heaven and hell, the Life Force, and the true nature of relationships between women and men.
The roster of characters in this debate obviously is drawn from Mozart's Don Giovanni, one of the great masterpieces of all opera. As a former practising music critic, Shaw couldn't avoid Mozart in connection with the idea of Don Juan. He didn't try. Mozart is woven into the fabric of the play by explicit reference in text and stage directions alike. All of the participants in Don Juan in Hell refer to him except Ana, and Shaw specifies that snippets of his music should be used as "calling cards" to introduce all four of the characters.
The roster of characters in this debate obviously is drawn from Mozart's Don Giovanni, one of the great masterpieces of all opera. As a former practising music critic, Shaw couldn't avoid Mozart in connection with the idea of Don Juan. He didn't try. Mozart is woven into the fabric of the play by explicit reference in text and stage directions alike. All of the participants in Don Juan in Hell refer to him except Ana, and Shaw specifies that snippets of his music should be used as "calling cards" to introduce all four of the characters.
(I can't avoid Mozart either. I'm listening to Don Giovanni as I write this.)
It's entirely possible to present the play without the third act, and previous productions have offered that option. It's also possible to detach the embedded Don Juan in Hell scene and present it alone, as a self-contained entity -- as the Shaw Festival did in its 1962 debut season.
Commentator Charles A. Berst succinctly observed of the Don Juan in Hell scene:
Shaw himself admitted as much in his introductory essay."Paradoxically, the act is both extraneous and central to the drama which surrounds it."
The complete play is a true dramatic marathon for the cast and audience alike, but especially so for the actor who portrays John Tanner/Don Juan Tenorio (note the deliberate resemblance of the name). It's not just the fact that he's on stage for so much of the play's over-five-hour performing time, but the more pertinent fact that this character is Shaw's mouthpiece for the philosophical ideas which the author wishes to hammer home. And Tanner/Don Juan does hammer the ideas -- so forcefully and at such great length that the other characters make several sarcastic comments about his incredible torrents of words. Take just the Don Juan in Hell scene as an example. In its 100-minute playing time, Tanner easily has to speak over 70% (perhaps more) of the entire text, and in one case has a speech which runs all by itself to well over a full page of script.
* * * * * * * * * *
So, now, to the 2019 production. The lengthy running time was handled with an 11:00 AM curtain, a 75-minute lunch break after the second act, and 20-minute intermissions after Act 1 and Act 3. The show ended at 5:20 PM.
Camellia Koo has designed a handsome, traditional suite of costumes in appropriate period style for the year 1905, when the play was first staged. For Don Juan in Hell, the costumes represent the height of the social pyramid for Spain in the seventeenth century -- except for the Devil, whose costume retains the 1905 style, thereby appearing "contemporary" to the rest of the play. Koo's set is formed of two large walls of floor-to-ceiling stylized bookcases, with half-height and full-height rolling ladders for access to the upper shelves. These ladders open up fascinating vertical as well as horizontal possibilities for variety in stage pictures. The shelves incorporate practical doors in Act 1 and windows in Act 3. In Act 4, they are replaced by a single shelf unit with broken ends where the larger segments have broken off -- an appropriate visual metaphor for John Tanner's final broken attempts to evade capture by the Life Force.
Joseph Tritt's understated original musical score for the play makes use of appropriate embedded snippets of Mozart's Don Giovanni, following the suggestion of the author (not slavishly, but effectively). An inspiration was the idea of having the "popular air" whistled by Straker throughout Acts II-IV be represented by La ci darem da mano, Don Giovanni's serenade to Zerlina in the opera.
An even more fascinating musical adaptation marked the opening pages of the play, when the entire (somewhat elliptical) dialogue between Octavius Robinson and Roebuck Ramsden was accompanied by non-metric harpsichord chords, and turned into operatic recitative in the style of Mozart.
I doubt if any other play ever written makes such extreme demands on the memory and vocal cords of one single actor. Gray Powell turned in a fascinating performance as John Tanner, covering the gamut from solemn and sincere to sarcastic and sardonic. His control of the text, especially in his long speeches in Act 1, was noteworthy and his crystal-clear diction ensured that every word carried across into the audience, even when he was ranting at full throttle.
In the lengthy third act, Powell achieved even more gripping results by generating considerable dramatic interest in Don Juan's apparently endless philosophical monologues. I place little store on the moments when he fumbled a bit with this or that word or phrase, preferring to focus instead on the incredibly precise delivery of such daunting set-pieces as the lengthy "They are not ____, they are only ____" speech which goes on exactly according to that template for literally dozens of comparisons in a string. Also noteworthy was his careful adherence to the spirit of Shaw's stage directions in creating for Don Juan a distinctly different character and varied speaking voice from John Tanner, albeit with resemblances. By any standard, this was a performance of energy and fire in a context where few expect anything of the sort. Overall, Powell created a remarkably strong centre to the entire play.
Tanner's antagonist, the representative of the Life Force, was played by Sara Topham with much more than a hint of the irresistible energy which neither she nor anyone else can master or evade. As Ann Whitefield, both face and voice held a consistent hint of laughter, even when damped down to the decorum of mourning. In the first act, I found that it was not easy to follow her soft-edged accent but her diction became decidedly clearer in the later running. The concentration of the seductive energy in the final moments of the play was both intense and enchanting, the latter characteristic an absolute necessity as the script requires Ann to become a true Siren of the Life Force in those culminating moments. As Doña Ana, she adopted a slightly more rhetorical style with the implicit laughter absent -- again, an effective character change from Ann, a change sketched in lightly rather than painted with bold colours.
Veteran actor David Adams returns to the Shaw after a 25-year absence to play the dual role of Roebuck Ramsden and the Statue of the Commander. As Ramsden, Adams summoned great resources of scorn to heap on Tanner (a notable moment being when he introduces Tanner in the last act with the dismissive "one of our circle"). For the role of the Statue, Adams summoned up a bluff, military heartiness that was quite foreign to Ramsden, but right on point for this very different character. His singing voice was deployed to good effect in the recitatives of the first scene and in his brief duet with the Devil of Mozart's Vivan la femmine! Viva il buon vino!
Only a conventional theologian of the most rigid kind could carp at the inspired choice of Martha Burns to portray the Devil. An unmistakable presence even when sitting still, Burns provided the necessary counterweight and debating opponent to Gray Powell's forceful Don Juan. Effective comic timing and lightly rhetorical pointing of some of Shaw's choicest sardonic repartee added much to the fun, as for instance in the classic, "Have you ever been in the country where I have the largest following? England." Less rewarding was her portrayal of Mendoza, leader of the brigands. The thick Spanish accent added little and detracted much in the way of comprehension. Since Mendoza is [a] Jewish and [b] recently a waiter at the Savoy in London, I see no real need to assume that she's a long-time resident of Spain at all, whatever her birthplace may have been.
As a side note here, I have to point out that there were two or three instances where one of the other performers referred to either Mendoza or the Devil with the original masculine pronouns, where most references were altered to feminine pronouns. A hidden peril of gender-blind casting, because the audience may only become blind to the gender of the actor, not that of the character.
Sanjay Talwar came close to stealing the show with his coolly cutting presentation of chauffeur Henry Straker, his dissection of his employer Tanner's pretensions beautifully understated with well-nigh perfect comic timing. His melodious whistling of Mozart was an easily-audible and recognizable comic highlight.
Long-time Shaw veteran Sharry Flett turned in a nuanced portrayal of Mrs. Whitefield, accurately capturing the bewilderment that ineffectual woman feels when confronted with the tyrannical energy of her older daughter, Ann.
Kyle Blair gave a cartoonish portrayal of Octavius Robinson. With almost every line turned into the tearful moanings of a sentimental poet scorned, his Tavy veered into caricature again and again. This isn't necessary; the script offers adequate opportunity to create a more nuanced character. Blair's fine singing voice registered to good effect in the opening recitative passages.
Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster nailed the icily contemptuous Violet Robinson as thoroughly as Violet nailed down everyone who crossed her path.
As her secret husband, Hector Malone, Jeff Irving found both the romantic ardour and the romantic fantasy swimming in the mind of the young American son-of-wealth.
Tanja Jacobs cut the right kind of figure as a stuffy, old-fashioned, rigid moralist in her brief appearance as Roebuck Ramsden's maiden sister, Susan.
Tom McCamus started out as a forcefully temperamental and controlling Irishman, and accurately presented the growing bewilderment of Hector Malone, Senior at finding out that he can neither evade Violet's control nor put her down.
Director Kimberley Rampersad has crafted a finely-paced, well-integrated production of a notoriously sprawling script, allowing Shaw's rhetorical expanses fair play while also maintaining the through line of the drama. Her direction makes the most effective use of the possibilities in the text and in the set. I was particularly impressed with both the pacing and the interesting stage pictures which she conjured up for the lengthy debate of Don Juan in Hell.
In sum, the Shaw Festival has mounted a fascinating, rewarding full day of theatre in this rare production of the complete Man and Superman. The show continues on stage with a limited run of performances until October 5. A definite do-not-miss!
Camellia Koo has designed a handsome, traditional suite of costumes in appropriate period style for the year 1905, when the play was first staged. For Don Juan in Hell, the costumes represent the height of the social pyramid for Spain in the seventeenth century -- except for the Devil, whose costume retains the 1905 style, thereby appearing "contemporary" to the rest of the play. Koo's set is formed of two large walls of floor-to-ceiling stylized bookcases, with half-height and full-height rolling ladders for access to the upper shelves. These ladders open up fascinating vertical as well as horizontal possibilities for variety in stage pictures. The shelves incorporate practical doors in Act 1 and windows in Act 3. In Act 4, they are replaced by a single shelf unit with broken ends where the larger segments have broken off -- an appropriate visual metaphor for John Tanner's final broken attempts to evade capture by the Life Force.
Joseph Tritt's understated original musical score for the play makes use of appropriate embedded snippets of Mozart's Don Giovanni, following the suggestion of the author (not slavishly, but effectively). An inspiration was the idea of having the "popular air" whistled by Straker throughout Acts II-IV be represented by La ci darem da mano, Don Giovanni's serenade to Zerlina in the opera.
An even more fascinating musical adaptation marked the opening pages of the play, when the entire (somewhat elliptical) dialogue between Octavius Robinson and Roebuck Ramsden was accompanied by non-metric harpsichord chords, and turned into operatic recitative in the style of Mozart.
I doubt if any other play ever written makes such extreme demands on the memory and vocal cords of one single actor. Gray Powell turned in a fascinating performance as John Tanner, covering the gamut from solemn and sincere to sarcastic and sardonic. His control of the text, especially in his long speeches in Act 1, was noteworthy and his crystal-clear diction ensured that every word carried across into the audience, even when he was ranting at full throttle.
In the lengthy third act, Powell achieved even more gripping results by generating considerable dramatic interest in Don Juan's apparently endless philosophical monologues. I place little store on the moments when he fumbled a bit with this or that word or phrase, preferring to focus instead on the incredibly precise delivery of such daunting set-pieces as the lengthy "They are not ____, they are only ____" speech which goes on exactly according to that template for literally dozens of comparisons in a string. Also noteworthy was his careful adherence to the spirit of Shaw's stage directions in creating for Don Juan a distinctly different character and varied speaking voice from John Tanner, albeit with resemblances. By any standard, this was a performance of energy and fire in a context where few expect anything of the sort. Overall, Powell created a remarkably strong centre to the entire play.
Tanner's antagonist, the representative of the Life Force, was played by Sara Topham with much more than a hint of the irresistible energy which neither she nor anyone else can master or evade. As Ann Whitefield, both face and voice held a consistent hint of laughter, even when damped down to the decorum of mourning. In the first act, I found that it was not easy to follow her soft-edged accent but her diction became decidedly clearer in the later running. The concentration of the seductive energy in the final moments of the play was both intense and enchanting, the latter characteristic an absolute necessity as the script requires Ann to become a true Siren of the Life Force in those culminating moments. As Doña Ana, she adopted a slightly more rhetorical style with the implicit laughter absent -- again, an effective character change from Ann, a change sketched in lightly rather than painted with bold colours.
Veteran actor David Adams returns to the Shaw after a 25-year absence to play the dual role of Roebuck Ramsden and the Statue of the Commander. As Ramsden, Adams summoned great resources of scorn to heap on Tanner (a notable moment being when he introduces Tanner in the last act with the dismissive "one of our circle"). For the role of the Statue, Adams summoned up a bluff, military heartiness that was quite foreign to Ramsden, but right on point for this very different character. His singing voice was deployed to good effect in the recitatives of the first scene and in his brief duet with the Devil of Mozart's Vivan la femmine! Viva il buon vino!
Only a conventional theologian of the most rigid kind could carp at the inspired choice of Martha Burns to portray the Devil. An unmistakable presence even when sitting still, Burns provided the necessary counterweight and debating opponent to Gray Powell's forceful Don Juan. Effective comic timing and lightly rhetorical pointing of some of Shaw's choicest sardonic repartee added much to the fun, as for instance in the classic, "Have you ever been in the country where I have the largest following? England." Less rewarding was her portrayal of Mendoza, leader of the brigands. The thick Spanish accent added little and detracted much in the way of comprehension. Since Mendoza is [a] Jewish and [b] recently a waiter at the Savoy in London, I see no real need to assume that she's a long-time resident of Spain at all, whatever her birthplace may have been.
As a side note here, I have to point out that there were two or three instances where one of the other performers referred to either Mendoza or the Devil with the original masculine pronouns, where most references were altered to feminine pronouns. A hidden peril of gender-blind casting, because the audience may only become blind to the gender of the actor, not that of the character.
Sanjay Talwar came close to stealing the show with his coolly cutting presentation of chauffeur Henry Straker, his dissection of his employer Tanner's pretensions beautifully understated with well-nigh perfect comic timing. His melodious whistling of Mozart was an easily-audible and recognizable comic highlight.
Long-time Shaw veteran Sharry Flett turned in a nuanced portrayal of Mrs. Whitefield, accurately capturing the bewilderment that ineffectual woman feels when confronted with the tyrannical energy of her older daughter, Ann.
Kyle Blair gave a cartoonish portrayal of Octavius Robinson. With almost every line turned into the tearful moanings of a sentimental poet scorned, his Tavy veered into caricature again and again. This isn't necessary; the script offers adequate opportunity to create a more nuanced character. Blair's fine singing voice registered to good effect in the opening recitative passages.
Courtney Ch'ng Lancaster nailed the icily contemptuous Violet Robinson as thoroughly as Violet nailed down everyone who crossed her path.
As her secret husband, Hector Malone, Jeff Irving found both the romantic ardour and the romantic fantasy swimming in the mind of the young American son-of-wealth.
Tanja Jacobs cut the right kind of figure as a stuffy, old-fashioned, rigid moralist in her brief appearance as Roebuck Ramsden's maiden sister, Susan.
Tom McCamus started out as a forcefully temperamental and controlling Irishman, and accurately presented the growing bewilderment of Hector Malone, Senior at finding out that he can neither evade Violet's control nor put her down.
Director Kimberley Rampersad has crafted a finely-paced, well-integrated production of a notoriously sprawling script, allowing Shaw's rhetorical expanses fair play while also maintaining the through line of the drama. Her direction makes the most effective use of the possibilities in the text and in the set. I was particularly impressed with both the pacing and the interesting stage pictures which she conjured up for the lengthy debate of Don Juan in Hell.
In sum, the Shaw Festival has mounted a fascinating, rewarding full day of theatre in this rare production of the complete Man and Superman. The show continues on stage with a limited run of performances until October 5. A definite do-not-miss!
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