✭✭✩✩✩

by Georges Feydeau & Maurice Desvallières, directed by Neil Munro

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

June 25-September 25, 2005

“A Lumpy Amuse-Gueule”

The 50-minute French farce Something on the Side is not so much a side dish as a lumpy amuse-gueule that really gives no foretaste of the more substantial offerings at the Shaw Festival.  This lunchtime show is in no way a must-see, but if you already happen to be in Niagara-on-the-Lake and feel in need of a short but heavy dose of silliness, this skit will fill the bill.

The first thing you notice when you enter the Royal George Theatre is Sue LePage’s incredibly witty set.  The action takes place in a fin de siècle Parisian seafood restaurant.  As befits a farce LePage has gone overboard with the marine theme of the set giving it the swooping lines of Art Nouveau and making it look like a bathysphere out of Jules Verne.  An anchor with lampshades is a chandelier, tendrils sprouting bubbles from nautilus shells are wall lamps, the service doors have portholes and above the proscenium a man in a antique deep-sea diving outfit looks on.

If only the play itself were as clever as the design.  The farce is adapted by director Neil Munro from Maureen LaBonte’s new translation of C’est une femme du monde by Georges Feydeau and Maurice Desvallières.  The play had a disappointing run when it first appeared in 1890 after which Feydeau decided to take a break to hone his craft. Feydeau, it appears, had the right idea. 

We meet Alfred and his third wife Jen who run an exclusive seafood restaurant.  There two gentlemen, known by their abbreviated names Tom-Pop and H.B.S., come in to arrange private dining rooms.  They go beyond the usual gentlemen of French farce since they are there not to cheat on their wives but on their mistresses.  When Tom-Pop and H.B.S. decide to share a room for four, fireworks explode since everyone involved knows everyone else.

The work is so slight one wonders why Munro chose this among Feydeau’s numerous and  funnier one-acters.  Munro has added more verbal wit to the text--his title, for example, is cleverer than the original, but the geometrical relationships of the couples are more interesting in theory than on the stage and the action stops just when you think it should rev up.

The play would be a good vehicle for Simon Bradbury as Alfred if the role were larger.  Bradbury chooses exactly the right style, halfway between realism and artifice, to make his character funny but not too mechanical.  As usual, his verbal and physical timing are impeccable.  I was sorry Alfred’s habit of constantly knocking a Chinese vase from its pedestal but catching it just in time extended only halfway through the show.  One wishes Munro had allowed Bradbury a little latitude in improvisation since Bradbury is the one member of the cast who knows how to do this kind of thing successfully.  Unfortunately, his character vanishes for much of the second half of the play when the not-too-interesting gentlemen take over.

As H.B.S., Douglas E. Hughes seems more at home in this genre than does Ric Reid as the stuffy Tom-Pop.  The tic Munro gives them of loud synchronous laughter wears thin quickly.  The talents of Kate Hennig as Rosaline and Lisa Horner as Laurette are wasted in the flimsy roles of the two mistresses.  Munro encourages them and the rest of the cast to overact to the point where they are not funny.  Trish Lindström looks puzzled as Alfred’s jealous but dim-witted wife Jen.  Harry Judge, unrecognizable in big glasses and a bad wig, seems to have wandered in from a panto.

Directing farces is like whipping cream.  For both to be light and still hold their shape you have to have a firm but light hand and need to know when enough is enough.  Munro’s hand is far too heavy and beats the air and much of the humour out of this frothy nothing of a play. 

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Douglas E. Hughes as H.B.S. ©2005 Shaw Festival.