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by Robertson Davies, Jeff Culbert

Ausable Theatre, Lucan

June 16-July 1, 2000

“Robert Davies Recovered”

The Ausable Theatre is one of Southern Ontario's newest and smallest summer theatres.  Now in its third year, the theatre is located in the village of Lucan (pop. 1900) about 30 minutes from both Stratford and London.  The theatre seats only about 70.  According to the bios in the programme, most of the artists are involved in the alternate theatre scene of London.  It is all the more surprising that this group should have as its primary focus the dramatic works of Robertson Davies.  Davies' plays, of course, have long been regarded in academia as impossibly old-fashioned and arrière-garde.   Jeff Culbert, the Artistic Director of the Ausable Theatre, however, believes that, taken on their own terms, Davies' plays are delightful, intelligent comedies that should not be neglected because of what is currently thought fashionable.  Davies has so far featured in each season as one of their three productions.  They inaugurated their first season in 1998 with a double-bill of "Overlaid" (1946) and "Eros at Breakfast" (1947).    The following year they did the full-length play "A Jig for the Gypsy" (1954).  And this year we have "Hunting Stuart" (1955), Davies’ last play produced at Toronto’s Crest Theatre and considered by many as his best play. 

The Ausable production reveals the play as a highly amusing comedy of ideas, by turns farcical, satiric and fantastic, and quite undeserving of the professional neglect in which it has languished.  The play begins in the mode of a drawing-room comedy à la Noel Coward as we find Lilian Stuart, the ambitious wife of an Ottawa civil servant, and her daughter Caroline in a fluster over the scandalous behaviour of Mr. Stuart's aged Aunt Clemmie and Caroline's decision to marry Fred, her psychologist boyfriend.  Aunt Clemmie, who believes in countering others' negativity by "radiating positivity" , is one of Davies' best comic creations.  Her arrival only stirs things up and leads to the typical Davies' situation where the seemingly irrational older generation actually knows more and is more practical the the would-be rational younger generation.  Once Mr. Stuart arrives and we are led to believe the worst about Aunt Clemmie, are we told that she has disgraced the family only by becoming the spokeswoman for a laxative called "The Flush of Youth". 

It is with the arrival of the husband and wife scientists, Dr. Shrubsole and Dr. Sobieski, that the play veers into the realm of Pirandellian fantasy to become a kind of Canadian "Enrico IV".  Unlike the psychologist boyfriend who believes that our nature is determined entirely by environment, Shrubsole and Sobieski believe that we are the sum of everything we have inherited and should seek to get in touch with humanity’s "collective unconscious".  More specifically, their genealogical studies have determined that the petty civil servant Mr. Stuart is in reality the sole living descendant of Bonny Prince Charlie and thus, according to them, the rightful heir to the British throne.  To prove this, Dr. Shrubsole has developed a powder which, depending on the amount inhaled, can take a person back to assume the personality of a specific ancestor.  When Stuart awakes as Bonny Prince Charlie himself, all manner of hilarious complications ensue. 

The principal butt of Davies' humour are those Canadians who seek a sense of superiority by trying find royal connections in their family tree.  On a more general level, however, the point made in various contexts in the play (and perhaps too often) is that "we live in an old house",  i.e., that when we marry we marry everyone related to our future spouse and that when we are born we are, literally, everyone who has contributed to our being.  The inference is that instead of looking for a "new house", we should concentrate more fully on knowing the one we live in.  Superficially this seems reactionary, but from a Jungian point of view it is meant to be liberating to know that everyone has a "king within" or, in fact, a whole universe within to know and explore.  As Aunt Clemmie exclaims, "Space travel is nothing compared to this!"

As one might expect in such a small theatre, this is a rather low-budget production, but low-budget does not mean low on imagination.  Doug Peterman's simple set and Virginia Pratten's costumes effectively conjure up an Ottawa drawing room and its denizens circa 1950.  Pratten's costumes for the excentric Aunt Clemmie and the exotic Drs. Sobieska and Shrubsole were especially clever.  Tim Culbert, working with a very basic set of lights, is particularly good at creating magical changes in mood for the various scenes of heightened fantasy.  The whole production is tautly directed by Jeff Culbert, who has an excellent sense of pacing and knows how to build up a steady momentum in a comedy.  He also knows when to pause the action to focus on a significant scene such as the healing scene in Act Two which, though brief, gives a sudden, mysterious glimpse into the serious ideas underlying what might have seemed merely farce.

Of the seven actors, only Caitlin Murphy as Caroline Stuart turned in an unenjoyable performance.  Unlike the others, she rushed virtually all of her lines thus giving herself no opportunity create a character or elicit humour.  On the other hand, two of the cast turned in superlative performances that would be welcome on any stage.  Lucy Williams as Aunt Clemmie was a delight throughout and in "radiating positivity" actually seemed to do so.  Her reaction when Henry-as-Charles’ "royal touch" heals her arthritic hand was especially moving.  Ljiljana Malinich was excellent in the role of the exotic Dr. Sobieska, who is somehow able to maintain her scientific objectivity even in the most compromising circumstances. 

Virginia Pratten, Tim Culbert and Jayson McDonald are all Ausable regulars and all appeared in "A Jig for the Gypsy" last year.  Pratten as Lilian Stuart did very well in giving variety to a demanding role which requires her to be in an ever increasing state of exasperation.  Tim Culbert was very funny as the meek but happy nonentity of a civil servant but could have made heightened the contrast with his other persona as Prince Charlie.  McDonald, who had an hilarious cameo as a photographer in "A Jig for the Gypsy", was equally hilarious in the much longer role as Dr. Shrubsole, though he could have made more of having to deal with a wife so willing to commit adultery for the sake of science.  Scott Holden-Jones as Caroline's boyfriend was excellent in distinguishing his two roles as the self-important psyochologist of today and as his ancestor a 19th-century phrenologist (one of Davies' jokes, of course). 

I can't help but reflect on how much more enjoyable this low-budget production of an obscure Davies play was compared with the many big-budget productions of classic comedies that Stratford has been putting on over the past several years.  Expensive sets, costumes and lighting do not make a comedy funnier or more effective.  What Stratford has been lacking, but what the tiny Ausable Theatre has in Jeff Culbert, is a director who has insight into the comedy he is directing, knows how to communicate that insight to his cast and knows how to get the cast to communicate that insight to the audience.  I very much look forward to their next Davies production.

©Christopher Hoile

Photo: Cover of the 1st edition of Hunting Stuart, New Press Toronto, 1972