Reviews 2008
Reviews 2008
✭✭✭✭✭
by Githa Sowerby, directed by Jackie Maxwell
Shaw Festival, Court House Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
May 23-October 4, 2008
"Hidden Truths"
In 2004 the Shaw Festival’s Artistic Director Jackie Maxwell introduced us to forgotten British playwright Githa Sowerby (1876-1970) and what was once her best-known play, “Rutherford and Son” (1912). This year she brings us an even rarer play by Sowerby, “The Stepmother”, which had had only one performance in 1924 before falling into undeserved oblivion. The Shaw production is, in fact, the work’s North American premiere and the first anywhere since 1924. The formerly “lost” manuscript was only recently discovered in Sowerby’s publisher’s basement and sent directly to Maxwell. “The Stepmother” may not be as intense a work as “Rutherford and Son” but it is equally as subversive. In the earlier play glass-making provided the central imagery, this the later play it is dress-making. Rather than showing how truth is forged in fire, “The Stepmother” examines ways in which the naked truth is covered up.
The play begins with a prologue, judiciously abridged by Maxwell, set in 1911 where Eustace Gaydon discovers that his late sister Fanny’s will has left her entire fortune of £30,000 (more than $3,000,000 today) to an orphaned girl Lois Relph, who became her travelling companion and now lives in her house. In the first act of the play set ten years later we find that Eustace, a widower with two daughters, has married Lois, who now runs a successful business as a dressmaker. Upon marriage Lois had willingly granted Eustace power of attorney over her inheritance even though by then the law no longer required her to do so. Her trust in the untrustworthy Eustace leads events to near-tragedy. The crisis comes when Lois decides that her elder stepdaughter Monica should marry the man she loves. The lad’s father, Eustace’s former solicitor, will only assent to the marriage if Lois agrees to settle a large amount on Monica. This she agrees to do unaware that her wastrel husband has already depleted her fortune.
J. Ellen Gainor in her fine programme note points to the two most obvious subversions of common expectation that Sowerby undertakes. Beginning with the title, Sowerby does not give us the wicked stepmother of fairy-tale and legend but a woman who deeply cares for the happiness of her children even if they are not biologically “her own”. Next is the inversion of the Gothic romance of the “Jane Eyre” type. Lois, like Jane, is an orphan who becomes a governess and finally is wed above her station to the master of the house. The key difference is Eustace has no money of his own. He gives Lois an allowance but he takes it out of her own money. He insists he is “master” because his world-view allows him no other position. Lois, who is no feminist, complies with this pretence to give his daughters the sense they live in a “normal” family. Sowerby further subverts expectations when Lois no longer can resist the advances of her neighbour Peter Holland, who, unlike Eustace, truly loves her. Rather than punishing Lois for this transgression, Sowerby shows that it saves her and at the play’s conclusion an entirely new kind of family is created, built not on legal sanctions or biological relations.
As was the case in “Rutherford and Son”, what characters don’t say is just as important as what they do say. This is completely unlike Shaw’s characters who are so adept at finding precisely the right words to argue their points. By using this very modern technique Sowerby keeps is in the dark about exactly how badly Eustace has mismanaged Lois’s money, thus causing tension to build until a climactic confrontation between the couple in Act 2. Again what makes Sowerby’s world-view so fascinating is how she focusses not on tragedy but on how the characters cope with and find means to overcome potential tragedy.
Maxwell draws powerful performances from the entire cast. Claire Jullien, in her first appearance at the Shaw, gives one of her best-ever performances as Lois. Though Lois is the one with the fortune and though she is the one who has risen from nothing to successful businesswoman, Jullien accomplished the difficult task of portraying Lois as conventional and politically unenlightened but not foolish. Sowerby’s point is to show Lois’s growing awareness of the power she has and of her final willingness to use it. Blair Williams has an equally difficult role as Eustace. Eustace, too, thoroughly believes the received wisdom that men, not women, know how to manage money despite his continual failures. It would have been easy for Maxwell and Williams to portray Eustace as simply a villain who appropriates first his aunt’s legacy then his wife’s. But that would have missed his complexity. Eustace is very much like Torvald in Ibsen’s “A Doll’s House”, completely unaware because of his upbringing that there is anything wrong with viewing women as inherently inferior to men. Williams makes Eustace superficially charming but so used to deceiving himself about his waste of money that he has begun to believe his own lies. Sowerby sees his sexism as part of his self-deception. If we do initially see him as a villain we end by viewing him as pitiful human being who has ruined his own life and knows he has done so without fully understanding why.
Sowerby does not portray all men as Eustaces. Both Peter Holland played by Patrick Galligan and Eustace’s former solicitor Mr. Bennett played by Guy Bannerman see through him and rush to Lois’s aid. Galligan’s Peter’s is a very attractive, sympathetic figure and it is a wonder Lois holds out as long as she does against his charms. Bannerman’s Bennett is far more gruff and his attempts to block his son’s marriage because of hatred of Eustace almost seem unreasonable. Jesse Martyn makes the son Cyril a pleasant chap if a touch too much in the Bertie Wooster line.
Among the women it’s wonderful to see Jennifer Phipps on stage again as Eustace’s aunt Charlotte Gaydon. She depicts the ten-year aging of her character between the prologue and first act very effectively and fully represents one woman’s view of her own inferiority that Sowerby demonstrates is a delusion we have outgrown. Marla McLean is spritely as Lois’s eldest stepdaughter Monica, who is obviously quicker to catch on to the true nature of things than her younger sister Betty played by Robin Evan Willis.
William Schmuck’s costumes are gorgeous, as befits a play with a dressmaker as the titles character, and clearly based on a close study of the period. Camellia Koo’s set is not quite so allegorical as was Schmuck’s set for “Rutherford”. The most unusual feature is that the floor cover continues past the glass windows of the set to become a springlike backdrop. Perhaps she means to suggest that the hope the characters look for is not elsewhere but, literally, right under their feet. As always Louise Guinand’s lighting creates the illusion of natural light while enhancing mood.
Lois’s awakening to her own power is only one step towards unveiling the truth. Sowerby leaves us with a highly ironic ending. Lois thinks she has kept the truth about Eustace a secret from his daughters to protect them. They, however, know the truth and play along with it so make Lois feel better about her actions. Meanwhile, Monica has a secret that neither Betty nor Lois know about. It may not be possible to live life without some recourse to deception. The subtleties of this play will lead to many discussions afterward and much thanks that we have a festival like the Shaw and a director like Maxwell willing to bring such exciting finds to light.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Blair Williams, Claire Jullien and Marla McLean. ©David Cooper.
2008-07-02
The Stepmother