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by Rodney Ackland, directed by James MacDonald

Shaw Festival, Royal George Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake

May 22-October 27, 2002

"Lots of Atmosphere, Little Excitement"

"The Old Ladies" by Rodney Ackland is the disappointing show occupying the slot for mysteries on the Shaw Festival programme.  The play is not a whodunit since the killer and victim are obvious.  It is also not much of a thriller since there is very little excitement despite the director's heavy-handed attempts to drum some up.  After seeing the first two acts, the average audience member is likely to dream up all manner of interesting conclusions only to find that none of them happens.  To make matters worse, the director has decided at the last minute to add a dose of ambiguity to an otherwise straightforward ending.  This leaves the audience confused and wondering what the point is of this unmysterious mystery and unthrilling thriller.

Rodney Ackland (1908-1991) based this 1935 play on the novel of the same name by the once-popular minor author Hugh Walpole (1884-1941).  The story concerns three women in their 70s who live in a run-down rooming house in the fictional seaside town of Polchester.  The current residents are Lucy Amorest, a kind-hearted widow who has not heard from her son for three years, and Agatha Payne, a half-mad woman of "Gypsy blood" whose prying and threatening ways make her a difficult neighbour.  Into this gloomy world steps the timid May Beringer to take the room left vacant by the death of its former occupant.  May and Agatha form an instant dislike for each other, May's fearfulness only egging Agatha on to frighten her more.  The only thing of May's that interests Agatha is a large piece of amber carved into the shape of a dragon.  Agatha, who fancies herself a lover of beauty, determines that she will have it by any means possible.

I would like to say there is more to the story than this, but there isn't.  The cast is so adept at making less seem like more that we listen to large swaths of incredibly banal dialogue looking for clues and hidden motivations.  But there are none.  The learn the most about May, but the backgrounds of Lucy and Agatha are far too sketchy.  Ackland and Walpole think it is enough that Agatha is "foreign" and unreligious to make her a villain.  Why the three are in such poor financial straits and why they have left familiar surroundings for Polchester is never clear.

A read through the novel shows that all Ackland has done is to reduce the characters to three, set all the action within the house and to lift the dialogue verbatim from from the novel.  Such a facile adaptation does capture the feeling of mournfulness that pervades the dingy house.  But it does not make much sense of what the simple narrative is about.  It seems clear to me that the novel, flimsy as it is, is not primarily a thriller but rather a study of the hopelessness of women living in genteel poverty.  Walpole underscores this theme in some of Lucy's thoughts that do not appear in the play: "What happened to old ladies when they had no money and no friends?  No one cared about old ladies.  They cared about old women of the other class."

The fact that the play is in the "mystery" slot may have encouraged director James MacDonald to force the action into thriller mode to make it seem more exciting.  Why else  does he have the screechings of Bernard Herrmann's music from "Psycho" accompany Agatha's every sudden appearance in a doorway?  This reduces Agatha to a scary monster instead of a study of an obsessed old woman.  Once we are in the third act and realize that the plot is not going to have any twists, MacDonald decides to supply one himself by staging the final moments so that we don't know if they are real or imagined.  Coming after two and a half hours of trite realism this only causes confusion since it fits with nothing that has come before.  MacDonald is good at maintaining tension and atmosphere, but by the end we wonder what it was all for. 

That the play maintains our interest at all is entirely due to the skill of the actors.  Donna Belleville has a difficult task as the terminally kind Lucy.  Lucy is so preoccupied with seeming pleasant and in control it comes as a welcome relief to find that she has fears of her own that her son may be dead, that she will be left penniless and of the peculiar Agatha.  I would have been happy if Belleville had allowed more of Lucy's unease to peep through her steady stream of soothing words.

Maria Vacratsis struggles valiantly to humanize the character Agatha.  Vacratsis sees that Agatha's obsession with owning May's amber is like Othello's obsession with Desdemona's infidelity.  It is an expression of her own feeling of helplessness, a desire to possess some beauty in the midst of shabbiness.  Vacratsis shows clearly how May's constant protestations of weakness and fear bring out Agatha's desire to show strength and domination in a world where she has none.  How much better the play would work if MacDonald had allowed this complexity to flourish instead of undermining it horror movie tactics.

It is Wendy Thatcher as May who draws us into the play.  The most detailed character of the three, May is a woman who has had very little contact with people or had anyone pay her attention.  As a result is shy, innocent, fearful, childlike and painfully self-conscious.  Thatcher reflects all of these in a finely nuanced performance.  She is expert at poising our reaction halfway between laughter at May's silliness and pity for her fragility.  She reveals beneath May's trivial chatter a poor woman's desperate need to be wanted.      

David Boechler's set is a marvel on its own.  It shows us both storeys of the rooming house in great detail, including the three women's sharply differentiated rooms.  Andrea Lundy's moody lighting makes the house seems appropriately cold, dank and uncomfortable.

I know that the mysteries at the Shaw are very popular but after several misfires in a row now, I'm beginning to wonder whether the pool of mysteries actually worth reviving is not rather small. 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Wendy Thatcher and Maria Vacratsis. ©2002 Andrée Lanthier.