Canada's Shaw Fest is "magnificent"

September, 2004 performance reviewed by Frances Benn Hall

Berkshire residents who this summer were lucky enough to have a fine production of Shaw’s Heartbreak House in nearby Stockbridge, and who pine that our summer theatre season has passed too quickly, should be delighted to know that within easy striking distance there is the magnificent Shaw Festival at Niagara-on-the-Lakes where plays by Shaw (and others) will continue until early December.

An easy one day drive on the New York Thruway gets you there (flying also available) and once in the area one can take in two plays a day in any one of their three theatres.

The Shaw Festival started modestly in the early '60s with a production of the "Don Juan in Hell" scene from Man and Superman and has grown steadily in magnificence. At first concentrating on Shaw himself (and his collected plays run to six huge volumes), over the years the range has expanded including plays from 1856 to modern that evoke Shaw’s provocative spirit.

The 2004 repertory season includes twelve plays. Besides the two Shaw, Man and Superman and Pygmalion, there are plays by Wilde and Synge, an O’Neill, revivals of American musicals and Canadian plays, and a play as recent as Floyd Collins.

Staying with a friend in Waterloo, Ontario, I was only able to attend two matinees and opted for Shaw himself. However, if the direction, acting and staging of the other plays equals that of the two plays I saw, the Shaw Festival must have an unusually effective training program and a reputation that draws to it talented and dedicated thespians and directors.

Man and Superman is impeccable and brilliant, fast-paced, expertly timed, with rapid-fire Shavian dialog so smoothly delivered that one never misses a word. The play is a long one (even omitting the "Don Juan in Hell" scenes which at some performances was played as a morning matinee to the entire play) and Shaw’s staging demands four sets ranging from a staid British drawing room, to a brigand lair in the Sierra Nevada and necessitating on-stage early vintage motor cars etc.

With apparent ease scrims and a dozen tube chairs become brigand tents or front seats in a motor car and creative lighting effects and stunning costumes evoke Shaw’s 1905.

Ben Carlson as John Tanner, doomed from the start to be husband of Ann Whitefield (Fiona Byrne) because the life-force against which he rails cannot be avoided, is every inch the author of the "Revolutionists Handbook" but unaware until his cockney chauffeur (Patrick Galligan) alerts him, that he is doomed to matrimony and nothing can save him. Ann will have him, insisting she is only pleasing her mother (Sharry Flett) and poet Tavy (Evan Buliung) must love in vain. All five are enchantingly cast and abetted by David Schurmann as Roebuck Ramsden who as Ann’s other guardian cannot abide the fiery Tanner but is so taken in by Ann’s wiles that he accepts being called Annies’ Granny.

And there is more. In the subplot which includes the pregnant Violet (Lisa Norton) and her temporarily unrevealed husband Hector Malone (Graeme Somerville) the acting is equally impressive.

Since there are so many major Shaw plays, any given play can be staged only every few years. Man and Superman over the years has had perhaps 6 or 7 performances. It is there this year and will be playing until October 9th. Canada is lovely in October. The setting on the lake is beautiful, full of flowers. The play is magnificent. It is a rare experience.

Pygmalion, possibly a better known play which has over the years has had five revivals at the Shaw, will have a longer run, ending November 27. This reviewer found the performances equally brilliant. The dialog sparkling, the sets (realistic and detailed in this one) beautiful and imaginative, and the humor as devastating.

Tara Rosling is a stunning Eliza Doolittle and Jim Mezon an intriguing Henry Higgins. Fans of Rex Harrison in My Fair Lady may be briefly confused by a bald Higgins who is more petulantly his mother’s son, capable of small tantrums, but I found the interpretation of the role delightful and one that makes Eliza’s final decision so much the right one. Both leading actors are every inch the character and the roles of Pickering, Mrs. Pearce, Mrs. Higgins, and especially that of Eliza’s father (Simon Bradbury) are beautifully cast. The play, all in all, is so charming one is sorry when it is over.

A brief review can only hint at the glories that await one at the Shaw. If you can tuck in a brief visit this Fall, you will not be sorry. If you are not up to a sudden flight, contact the festival and get on the mailing list to see what delights they have in store for 2005. (www.shawfest.com or l-800-5ll-shaw).

On a longer visit and one in which you booked a nearby B and B, you could see several plays in a few days as well as attend lectures, seminars and all sorts of Shaw delights that are a part of this wonderful festival that is blooming away so close to our Berkshires.

Whatever they are doing to attract such high level theatre professionals, it is the right thing and their repertory system an outstanding one.