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written and directed by Richard Rose

Stratford Festival, Tom Patterson Theatre, Stratford

June 26-September 30, 2001

“Stratford Festival Becomes the Salterton Little Theatre”

As a follow-up to last year's Oscar Wilde celebration, the Festival this year is celebrating Robertson Davies.  There are staged readings of three of his plays along with a fully staged production of Richard Rose's adaptation of Davies' first novel, and the first of what became the Salterton Trilogy, "Tempest-Tost" (1951).  The rationale behind this adaptation is that not only does the novel deal with the Salterton (aka Kingston) Little Theatre's attempt to put on Shakespeare's "The Tempest" but also it is known that Davies first conceived of the story as a play and, fed up with the difficulties getting plays performed properly, recast the story as a novel.  In making the move from playwright to novelist Davies found his true métier.  To transform "Tempest-Tost" back into a play and thus undo Davies' work is a rather peculiar way of celebrating him.

As it turns out, Rose has not really turned the novel into a stand-alone play but rather has taken whole swaths of dialogue from it and put it on the stage irrespective of whether the dialogue has been adequately set up within the play.  Thus, Mrs Wildfang and Bonnie-Susan are discussed as candidates for the role of Juno, before we have been introduced to either one to know why the discussion is supposed to be funny.  Thus, Valentine the director is told in an extended speech not to criticize Mrs. Pottinger's make-up before we know who Mrs. Pottinger is or have seen clear examples of her work--and so on throughout the play.

Besides this, much of the dialogue Rose has taken from the novel is funny only because of the narrator's commentary on it or because we've been given the characters' backgrounds.  With both omitted in Rose's adaptation, line after line, funny in the novel like Professor Vambrace's introductory remark "Wet", falls flat like a series of punchlines without set-ups.

What will most distress those who know the novel is Rose's treatment of Hector Mackilwraith.  As one might expect at a Shakespeare festival, Rose foregrounds the humour of the Salterton Little Theatre's first attempt at Shakespeare at the expense, however, of Hector's story.  Judging from this adaptation, one would never know that Hector's story is the main plot of the novel.  Indeed, Davies' original subtitle for it was "The Life, Pathetic Love, Tragical Death and Joyous Resurrection of Hector Mackilwraith, B.A." 

On the positive side Rose's foregrounding gives us extended scenes of the cast rehearsing and performing "The Tempest", referred to in the novel but which on stage become the funniest scenes of the play.  On the negative side, when Hector's story is backgrounded, the Little Theatre scenes, while mildly satirical, lose their point.  In the novel Hector, a drab math teacher in a normal school, appears as the archetypal Canadian-without-Art.  His harsh and distinctly unpleasant childhood make him seek security by making gods of planning and common sense.  Doing moderately well with the bare necessities is all that matters.  His first contact with Art and Beauty in the form of the Little Theatre and Griselda Webster completely overturn his staid world in ways equally comic and pathetic and draw to him despair and suicide.  Davies' meaning is that only regular contact with Art and Beauty can balance the rational and irrational in man. 

In Rose's adaptation none of this, including Davies' meaning, comes across.  Rose refuses to portray Hector as anything other than a figure of satire.  Even the monologues Rose gives him where the unhappiness of Hector's life could come out are used only to enhance the satire and he directs actor Richard McMillan to add gestures to make them more ridiculous.  Only in the play's last moments does Rose try to capture the novel's mixture of comedy and pathos but by then it is far too late.  After losing the novel's complexity of tone and making a clown of the novel's central and most emblematic character, it's not surprising that the play is bland.

That said, the production itself is excellent.  Rose has assembled an fine ensemble cast.  Given how his role has been curtailed and distorted, Richard McMillan gives a very winning performance.  One can only dream how superb he could be if Rose had allowed the character more than one dimension.  Other outstanding performances come from Kate Trotter as Nellie, the queen bee of the Little Theatre; Brian Tree as the pompous Professor Vambrace and truly hilarious as Prospero; Tara Rosling as Pearl, the shy, oppressed daughter of Vambrace, also overturned by first love; newcomer Michael Schultz as the intellectual Solly Bridgetower, also in love with Griselda; and Jonathan Goad as the egocentric Lieutenant Roger Tasset, who mistakenly looks on Griselda as an easy lay.

The others are also fine: Robert King (Nellie's agreeable husband), Les Carlson (Tom, the Welsh gardener, Araby Lockhart (Mrs. Pottinger, the vision-impaired makeup mistress), John Dolan (Major Pye, the overbearing technical director), Jane Spence (the buxom Bonnie-Susan), Michelle Giroux (restrained for a change as the snobbish Griselda), Adrienne Gould (Griselda's tomboyish younger sister and maker of cider) and Kim Horsman (Mrs. Wildfang, prompter and devoted fan of Vambrace).  Benedict Campbell is rather too much as Humphrey Cobbler the musician, while Rose's adaptation has given Lucy Peacock in the important role of the director Valentine Rich very little to do.

Graeme S. Thomson's attractive set and sensitive lighting understatedly conjure up the large garden where most of the action takes place.  Charlotte Dean's costumes locate us in the 1950s and accurately reflect each character's personality.  She obviously enjoyed designing the overly literal get-ups an amateur group might devise for "The Tempest".  The only jarring note is Don Horsburgh's music, meant to depict a clash of the 17th and 20th centuries, but sounding merely cacophonous.   

Those who do not know the novel will find the show an moderately diverting entertainment but will leave with little notion of what Davies intended.  Those who do know the novel will be pleased to see many of the characters perfectly embodied on stage, but they will also be disappointed to find that both adaptation and direction go for the easy laugh rather than complex emotion--not really the best way to celebrate a great writer.

Photo: Richard McMillan as Hector. ©2001 Stratford Festival.