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by George Bernard Shaw, directed by Morris Panych

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

May 5-November 26, 2005

"You Can Tell When It’s This Good"

Of the Shaw Festival’s past three productions of “You Never Can Tell”, Shaw’s eccentric 1898 comedy, the current production directed by Morris Panych is by far the best.  Morris, the design team and the cast have caught Shaw’s sense of whimsy perfectly making this one of the most delightful shows of the season.

Shaw’s goal in “You Never” was to write a comedy in the mold of Oscar Wilde.  Wilde’s influence is seen in the intentionally artificial plot where coincidences abound and in the high proportion of witty epigrams.  Yet, Shaw can’t hold himself back from his usual preoccupations of satirizing society’s perceptions of class and gender. 

Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon, celebrated feminist and author of self-help books, returns from of self-imposed exile in Madeira with her older daughter Gloria, a budding feminist in her own right, and her boisterous twins Philip and Dolly.  Mrs. Clandon left her husband 18 years ago and so loathes him she has told her children nothing about him.  Now she seeks advice from the family solicitor M’Comas about what to do.  The children unknowingly invite their long-lost father to lunch with them along with his penniless tenant, the dentist Valentine, who has instantly fallen in love with Gloria.  In the twins who have no concept of English propriety, Shaw has characters who in all innocence continually break social codes and establish a carnivalesque atmosphere of topsy-turvydom that imbues the action.

The physical production is delightful.  Dominating the stage is one of the most imaginative sets seen at the Shaw in recent years--Ken MacDonald’s Art Nouveau-inspired curvilinear set based on a conic cross-section of a nautilus shell. This serves briefly as Valentine’s dental office but for most of the show more fittingly as the exterior and interior of the Marine Hotel with the addition of shell-like wall sconces and hanging lamps.  Nancy Bryant’s costumes follow though by giving the English characters suits with straight lines versus costumes cut along diagonals for the visitors from Madeira.  The twins are always in matching pastel costumes that are as just a bit too much as they are.  The white walls of the set and its central spiral tower allow Paul Mathiesen to light the scene in gradually varying pastels.  The music for scene changes, intermission, the offstage party and the curtain call are all chosen from the Beatles’s “Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band”, where, of course the Beatles exercised their own sense of whimsy in imitating songs of a bygone era.  Who would have thought the Beatles and Shaw would be such a perfect match?                         

Panych enhances this giddy atmosphere by having his actors play in the slightly exaggerated style of the screwball comedy films of the 1930s, an artifice perfectly in tune with the plot.  The characters are introduced one by one with character poses in front of the closed curtain and are encouraged to strike reaction poses at significant moments during the action.  This approach works only if all the cast plays at the same level, but, given the Shaw company’s emphasis on ensemble work that is just what the cast achieves.

The two most difficult parts to bring off are the twins, Philip and Dolly, here played by Harry Judge and Nicole Underhay.  The two are perfectly matched, almost like two halves a one person, and get the tone just right.  Their enthusiastic, insatiable curiosity is driven by their social innocence and the newness of their surroundings.  Sometimes the twins can come off as obnoxious, but not here.  The fact that everything familiar to us is new to them sets up the blissful topsy-turvydom of the action.

Mike Shara puts in a fine comic performance as Valentine, who would like to seem respectable but is rendered goofy by how happy his love for Gloria makes him.  As Gloria, Fiona Byrne well portrays a young woman whose stern attitude suggests she protests too much.  Rather than being freed by feminism, she seems to have chosen it as a sort of refuge from life.  Gloria’s mother, Mrs. Lanfrey Clandon is normally played by Goldie Semple.  On the evening I attended her understudy Patricia Vanstone took on the role.  She was efficient but understandably cautious in her performance.

Norman Browning is hilarious as the eternally grumbling Fergus Crampton, but makes clear that once Crampton really was in love with his wife.  David Schurmann turns a fine portrait of the unflappably philosophical waiter William, whose catchphrase is the play’s title.  Guy Bannerman is the suitably gruff solicitor M’Comas, also once in love with Mrs. Clandon.  And Graeme Somerville is wonderfully imperious as the “advocatus ex machina” Bohun, who takes over the show’s final act and simply tells everybody what do to you because he knows better. “You think you will, but you won’t” is his usual formulation.

“You Never Can Tell” is one of those productions where every element--direction, acting and design--combine to capture the precise mood and style of a piece so well it’s hard to imagine it ever being done better.  The show will leave you with the blissed-out feeling of “Fixing a Hole”, used for the first fanciful scene change, “And it really doesn’t matter if I wrong I’m right/ Where I belong I’m right/ Where I belong.” 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Mike Shara as Valentine and Norman Browning as Mr. Crampton. ©Ken MacDonald.