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written and directed by Peter Hinton

Stratford Festival, Studio Theatre, Stratford

October 9-November 2, 2002

"Obfuscation Uneschewed"

The first full-length play to be presented at Stratford's new Studio Theatre is Peter Hinton's "The Swanne: George III: The Death of Cupid".  It is the first part of a trilogy in verse about Queen Victoria.  Stratford has committed to producing "The Swanne: Princess Charlotte: The Courts of Venus" in 2003 and "The Swanne: Victoria: The Seduction of Nemesis" in 2004.  As the bloated titles suggest, Hinton has a lot to say but doesn't know when to stop.

For nine years Hinton worked on "The Swanne" until the text came to 1000 pages with 200 characters in a cycle of five plays.  Working with dramaturge Paula Danckert, Hinton pared the text down to three plays, each over three hours long, playable by 21 actors.  To judge from only the first instalment, the work should be pared down even further.  The play is filled with potentially powerful scenes, but again and again they outstay their welcome.  A scene between the aged actress and a young black boy makes the same point at least four times before Hinton decides to let it go; a scene between the bordello-owner St. John Voranguish and his wife is twice as long as it needs to be, and so on.  Rather than using verse to express ideas more concisely, Hinton seems to use it as a license for verbal excess.

The premise of "George III" is that Charlotte, wife of the Prince Regent (later George IV), has an affair with the Regent's equerry resulting in a black male child.  "The heir to the British throne is black", George III and the Regent are told.  The remainder of the play deals with the machinations to cover up this fact so that Victoria, the Regent's niece, will become queen.  Charlotte gives Victoria a packet of letters on the death of Victoria's father confessing the affair and causing Victoria to question the legitimacy of her reign.

The flaw in this premise is obvious.  An illegitimate child, no matter what colour, cannot become monarch of England.  Therefore, all the scandal Hinton's portrays is completely unconvincing.  Hinton admits that the play is "a work of fiction--entirely".  But plays, no matter how fantastic, have to play by their own rules.  The first scene has all of George III's numerous progeny count off where they are in the line of succession, thus introducing the notions of birth order, sex and legitimacy as rules for determining who shall reign.  We learn at least twice that Edward, Victoria's father, must throw over his mistress and his children by her, to marry a royal and produce an heir, underlining yet again the importance of legitimacy.  To state that Charlotte's black child is actually "rightful heir to the British monarchy" as Hinton does in the play and his notes is to ignore facts about the world of the play that he himself put there.

In addition to a flawed premise and self-indulgent writing, Hinton deliberately courts confusion by placing the action within a double framework and juxtaposing scenes from multiple time periods.  The play opens with the mature Queen Victoria serving as chorus mentioning the times and places of events.  At the end of the play we realize that what we have seen is a play written by the young Victoria as an attempt to come to terms with the "truth" Charlotte's letters tell of the "rightful heir".  Up to the end we have supposed that the play is a memory play with the mature Victoria watching her younger self in act in the fuller context of history.  At the end we are asked to believe that the young Victoria has somehow been able to imagine the perspective her older self will have.

Though the play begins in 1820 the year of George III's death, the majority of the action occurs in 1819 the year of Victoria's birth and the birth of the black child.  When the action disconcertingly shifts to 1830, the year of George IV's death, we assume these are flash-forwards until the end in 1837, the time when Victoria is writing the play, turns out to be the base time.  Besides this, a number of flashbacks can occur within a single scene.  Hinton is trying to play the postmodern game of imbedded stories within stories but does do so clearly enough so that this structural game playing comes off as confusing rather than clever.

Peter Hinton also directs and has created a succession of visually striking scenes--ageing, peruked offspring gather around the dying George II, young Victoria entering in a flurry of letters.  Yet, given the plays flaws and structural difficulties it is impossible to care much about anything that happens.  Hinton directs each scene to have the same strident tone that over the course of three hours becomes wearying.

From the large cast, including some of Stratford's finest actors, he has drawn performances that are so over the top or so mannered they are not engaging.  Among the former are Ian White as the dying George III, Diane D'Aquila as Queen Charlotte and even worse as the ageing actress The Scarecrow, Benedict Campbell as an orphanage rough named Simon and John Dolan as a legless beggar.  Among the latter are Lucy Peacock as the odiferous but kind-hearted wet-nurse Mrs. Peabody, Margot Dionne as the haughty brothel-owner's wife Proserpine and Domini Blythe as the Victoria's governess. 

Much of the performances fall into the category of over-emphatic delivery because the actors are simply trying too hard.  These include Claire Jullien as Jaquenetta whose baby the royals steal, Paul Dunn as Jeremy the baby 16 years later, Seun Olagunju as William in love with Jeremy, Tim MacDonald as the Head Boy in an orphanage, Julia Donovan as the Gin Sot Dear and Derwin Jordan as the god Cupid.  There are performances that are all the stronger for their restraint.  Chief among these is Lally Cadeau as the mature Victoria, lending a solemn, acerbic tone to the proceedings.  Bernard Hopkins gives a fine portrait of the gourmandizing Prince Regent.  Benedict Campbell makes a blithely duplicitous St. John Voranguish whose wife discovers his illegal business connections.  Evan Buliung chillingly makes Doctor Shuddas's rigid formality a blind for evil.

"George III" is performed a virtually bare stage though Glen Charles Landry is credited with set design.  Carolyn M. Smith has designed the exaggerated Regency costumes, stiff and black for the aristocrats, soft and earth-toned for the poor.  Lighting designer Robert Thomson situates the action in appropriate levels of murk.

An epic scope does not need to imply a confusing presentation. In fact, it requires exactly the opposite.  Modern multi-part epic plays that have told an alternate view of history all the while eschewing obfuscation and relating a compelling narrative include Tony Kushner's seven-hour "Angels in America" (1991-92), David Edgar's eight-hour "Nicholas Nickleby" (1980) and John Barton's cycle of ten one-hour verse plays called "Tantalus" (2000) retelling the events that that Homer did not include in "The Iliad".  Unlike these, Hinton's tale is not compelling and his presentation unclear.  While we applaud the ambition of a project like "The Swanne" and the courage of the Stratford Festival in taking on such a large project, the first instalment of this trilogy is more tedious than exciting.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: A version of this review appeared in TheatreWorld (UK) 2002-10-21.

Photo: Sarah McVie and Seun Olagunju. ©2002 Stratford Festival.