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written and directed by Peter Hinton

Stratford Festival, Studio Theatre, Stratford

August 19-September 26, 2004

"The Swanne Crashes"

The third part of Peter Hinton's ambitious "Swanne" trilogy, "Queen Victoria (The Seduction of Nemesis)", is a major let-down after its predecessor “Princess Charlotte (The Acts of Venus)”.  Part 3 is solely concerned with following up the actions of Part 2 and tying up loose plot lines to such an extent that the themes so clearly developed in Part 2 are virtually abandoned.  Hinton claims that each part of the trilogy can stand alone, but the evidence of Part 3 contradicts that.  The only way people will feel the impact of the many meetings of long lost friends and reconciliations of enemies in Part 3 is if they have seen the previous two plays.

Part 3 is disappointing for many reasons.  First of all, the none of the resolutions of the many plot lines is emotionally or intellectually intriguing enough to justify our having spent the more than nine hours of theatre it has taken to tell the story.  Second, the conclusion to the trilogy which finds most of our favourite non-royal characters emigrating to Canada seem to trivialize the whole enterprise.  Two and a half parts of the trilogy have focussed on the question of how people are to live amid the corruption and multiple inequities of 19th-century England.  Rather than a satisfying solution from within, emigration from England is literally provides an escape from all the issues the play has raised besides naively suggesting that the New World is not as capable of corruption as the Old. 

Finally, if people were hoping that the meaning of this confusing three-part epic would be revealed, they will find that Hinton has abandoned the themes developed in Part 2.  There prostitution became the metaphor that linked the worlds of the brothel, the court, the church and the theatre.  In Part 3 Hinton shifts to a tired postmodern playfulness in which the trilogy we see, supposedly being written by Victoria, itself becomes one of the main subjects discussed.  Victoria has to choose between her fiction, “The Swanne”, and the reality of governing.  She therefore destroys “The Swanne”.  The play we see that she has written thus somehow contains the scene of its own demise.  Hinton thus retreats from the grand moral, ethical, historical stance he seemed to take in Parts 1 and 2 to a form of mirror-within-mirror game-playing that resolves nothing and seems to mock the effort we have expended in watching it.

           

Nevertheless, under Hinton as director the cast works as a finely tuned ensemble with many of the younger actors given a chance to shine.  Principal among these is Lara Jean Chorostecki as Drina, later to become Queen Victoria.  The concentration and intensity she brings to the role make us care about Victoria in a way that we did not in Parts 1 and 2.  Seun Olagunju continues as the sensitive William, the black boy Victoria fancies as the rightful heir to the throne.  His white friend and lover Jeremy, whom we thought had died in escaping from the orphanage in Part 1, turns out to have survived.  In this role Jeffrey Wetsch shows a wide range of ability, comic and tragic, that finally make this character come alive.   

Michelle Fisk, with her fine gift for comedy, makes the prostitute Button Undone Betty a real delight.  Adrienne Gould, playing Dot Peabody who betrayed the brothel gang, presents a powerful study of a woman consumed by conscience.  Tanja Jacobs takes on three roles--unrecognizable as the pilloried, cadaverous brothel madam Mother Needham, pert and comic as the Bedlam attendant Mrs. Thornful and haughtily menacing as Victoria’s mother, The Duchess of Kent.  Margot Dionne is rivetting as the now-mad Prosperpine Voranguish, not seen since Part 1.  Michelle Giroux makes the prostitute Mary Robinson, who helps Williams find his mother in Bedlam, much more of an aristocrat than Karen Robinson did in the role last year.     

Other fine work comes from Diane D’Aquila, continuing in the role of the now-blind actress called “The Scarecrow”; Shane Carty as Victoria’s sympathetic uncle Leopold, to whom her play “The Swanne” is dedicated; and Donald Carrier and Leopold’s now-spurned lover Baron Stockmar. 

Otherwise certain roles are marred by overemphatic delivery--Nicholas Van Burek as Bishop Shuddas, Robert King as Bedlam keeper Mr. Maddocks and rebel Arthur Thistlewood, and Thom Marriott as Fred Dobing, Jeremy’s father, whom we also assumed had disappeared.  Brad Rudy does very well as St. John Voranguish, the primary villain of the trilogy, but he can’t summon quite the sense of depravity that Scott Wentworth did in the role last year.  

Eo Sharp's set design is simpler this year with the clever twist in that the doors to Bedlam when opened reveal the interior of Kensington Palace.  Carolyn M. Smith's costumes period costumes are once again impressive in clearly distinguishing the various layers of Victorian society from highest to lowest.  Robert Thomson's lighting shows more variation than in Part 2, moving from the gloomy world of Bedlam and brothels to the warm glow that suffuses the ship carrying so many of the characters to Canada.

Dramaturge Paula Danckert had the daunting task of paring Hinton’s original five-part drama down to three.  Now having seen the entire trilogy, I feel the work should have been pared down even further.  Part 1 with its many needless time-shifts and numerous subplots and sub-subplots, made for a confusing and ultimately misleading introduction to the trilogy.  Part 3, with its focus on what happens to all of the characters, even some like the Peabody family that we didn’t know we were supposed to care about, is a mass of plot no longer in service of a theme.  Only in Part 2, which has the tightest structure, did both plot and the interlinking of themes come together. 

There is a good--perhaps even great--play hidden in the tangled thicket that is the three-part “Swanne”.  When that single “Swanne”, that one great play, can be freed from all the surrounding brambles that choke it, then we will finally have a work that justifies massive effort required to produce it.

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Shane Carty and Lara Jean Chorostecki. ©2004 Eo Sharp.