Reviews 2007
Reviews 2007
✭✭✭✭✩
by John Van Druten, directed by Douglas Beattie
Touchmark Theatre, River Run Centre, Guelph
February 17-24, 2007
"Enchanting"
Touchmark theatre brings us a rarity in the romantic comedy “Bell, Book and Candle” (1950) by American author John Van Druten (1901-57). The play curiously shares the same situation as Van Druten’s “I Am a Camera” of the following year. Both are less known in themselves than as inspirations for entertainments in other media. “I Am a Camera” became the basis for the Kander and Ebb musical “Cabaret” (1966) and “Bell, Book and Candle” not only was made into a film of the same title in 1958 but also inspired the popular television series “Bewitched” (1964-72). People who have seen even a few episodes of the series will likely find that they have to struggle to put it out of their minds. Once they do, they will find a play that, unsurprisingly, delves into more fundamental issues about what it is to be human than the series ever attempted.
The play posits a world now familiar from “Bewitched” or the Harry Potter novels where witches live among us in the everyday world. They look exactly like ordinary humans except that they have learned ways of controlling the forces of nature. Their rules, though, as those laid down by Harry Potter’s Ministry of Magic, are that any magic they perform must appear to be a coincidence. At the centre of the story is the voluptuous Manhattan witch Gillian Holroyd (much more alluring than TV’s “Samantha”), who has become dissatisfied with her life as a witch and has grown attracted to her tenant upstairs, the oblivious Shepherd Henderson (i.e., the “Darrin” figure). A crisis arises when Gillian discovers that Shepherd is about to marry in a week and not merely to anyone but to Merle, her (non-magical) archfoe in high school. Realizing that she must act quickly, she puts a spell on Shepherd that causes him to forget Merle and fall in love with her instead. Two questions this raises is how satisfying such an enforced love can be for Gillian and what Shepherd will do should the spell be broken and he discover what Gillian has done.
Van Druten’s special take on witches, including Gillian, is that they are selfish. They use magic to take “short cuts”, as he calls it, in the scheme of things to get what they want and to please only themselves. Van Druten’s witches, therefore, cannot shed tears and lose their powers should they fall in love with a non-witch. This gives the play a rather more serious tone than one might expect from a “romantic comedy”. Ultimately, the play is about the magic of ordinary human love and the sacrifices it involves.
Van Druten notion of witches’ characters does make the central female role a challenge. For the first two acts Gillian must seem cold and rather cruel in her pursuit of Shepherd. Elana Post, looking stunning and imperious, plays this well, but, inevitably, we become most engaged with her character when, to give away the plot, she realizes that she has actually fallen in love, has lost her powers and her past self has been exorcised as the implements of exorcism in the title suggest. Post expertly distinguishes between the invulnerable and vulnerable Gillians and makes this transformation the heart of the play.
Phi Bulani is excellent as Shepherd. He has innocent good looks and a sort of artless, puppy-dog charm that completely contrast with Post’s Gillian and, indeed, help explain why she would be attracted to someone who has all the softness she seems to lack. Bulani is especially good at depicting the hapless Shepherd when he is under Gillian’s spell and finds himself in an inexplicable state of bliss. He is hilarious in physical comedy as when he is drawn against his will as if my magnetism into Gillian’s apartment.
Rounding out the superlative cast are Eric Woolfe, Liza Balkan and Ian Deakin. Woolfe plays Gillian’s devil-may-care brother Nicky, later the model for Samantha’s Uncle Arthur in “Bewitched”. His mischievous expression and the tart way he delivers his lines make the character a constant pleasure. Balkan plays Gillian’s Aunt Queenie, who will become Samantha’s Aunt Clara in television. Balkan’s bumbling character is a complete contrast to Woolfe’s Nicky but is just as funny. Balkan is gifted with a brilliant sense of comic timing and it shows here in every scene she’s in. Deakin has the comic role of author Sidney Redlitch, a self-proclaimed expert in witchcraft, filled with more bluster than knowledge. Deakin brings off Redlitch’s hilarious combination of inebriation and pedantry with panache.
What is missing from the play is a concentration of witty dialogue. Compared to another supernatural comedy like Noel Coward’s “Blithe Spirit” (1941), Van Druten’s language tends to be rather ordinary. He seems to look for most humour in, what would have been in 1950, his highly unusual portrait of witches as our contemporaries without the pointed hats and magic wands. However, our experience of shows like “Bewitched” or the Harry Potter novels have made us familiar with this idea and have blunted what would otherwise have been a sequences of unusual surprises in the play. What remains effective are Van Druten’s gallery of comic supporting characters and the more sublime comedy of Gillian’s internal struggle and of Shepherd’s confusion, explicitly compared to that of Shakespeare’s character Bottom in “A Midsummer Night’s Dream”.
As usual the play is impeccably directed and designed by Douglas Beattie. Beattie’s 1950s apartment for Gillian features a figure on its back wall that initially suggests a stylized tree. In a story about the effect of the knowledge of witchcraft, we can’t help wondering whether Beattie is relating the story to the legend of Adam and his first wife Lilith, who was a witch, and whether he views the change in Gillian as a metamorphosis of the powerful Lilith into the fallible Eve. Under Renée Brode’s highly effective lighting, when Gillian casts a spell two paintings under the tree’s two branches light up and suddenly seem to become large malevolent eyes.
Once again Touchmark has brought professional theatre on the same high level as the Shaw Festival to Guelph. Top-notch performances and insightful direction make “Bell, Book and Candle” an enchanting comedy that both entertains and enlightens.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Elana Post and Ian Deakin. ©Douglas Beattie.
2007-03-10
Bell, Book and Candle