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by Noel Coward, directed by Blair Williams

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

August 1-October 11, 2009

"Two Out of Three"

“Ways of the Heart” is the last of the collections of one-act plays that make up Noel Coward’s “Tonight at 8:30” to open at the Shaw Festival.  It thus rounds off the first-ever production in Canada of the complete 10-play series.  The final trio comprises “The Astonished Heart” (1935), “Family Album” (1935) and “Ways and Means” (1936).  “Family Album” is the only one of these that the Shaw has staged before and that was back in 1971.  Director Blair Williams, who brought the riotous comedy “The President” last year, is blessed with the last two plays on the agenda, but cursed with the first.

“The Astonished  Heart” is probably the least well-written of all plays that make up “Tonight at 8:30”.  Unlike the other nine, here it seems as if Coward has tried to cram all the events of of an Ibsen-like tragedy into too small a space.  Something has to be excised and here, unfortunately, it seems to be the motivations for the characters.  When the play opens we see Barbara Faber, wife of world-famous psychiatrist Christian Faber (the Noel Coward role), waiting anxiously with Faber’s colleague Tim Verney and his secretary Susan Birch for the arrival of the mysterious Leonora Vail (the Gertrude Lawrence role).  When Leonora does arrive the similarity of this entrance to her very first entrance into that room causes Barbara to relive in flashback everything that has transpired between that moment and now.  In this it bears a strong resemblance to “Shadow Play”, another play in “Tonight at 8:30”, where too much of a sleeping drug causes Victoria Gayforth to relive her life with her husband up to the point where he asks her for a divorce.

The music and surrealism that lighten “Shadow Play” are absent from “The Astonished Heart” and so is any rigorous logic.  What we watch is initially presented as what Barbara recalls, but soon enough we see scenes that she could not have witnessed.  After the death of her husband, Leonora has returned to England, apparently with the firm intention of winning Barbara’s husband away from her.  Why she should wish to hurt her old school-friend in such a fashion is never explained and remains a gaping hole in the plot.  After leading him on, Leonora successfully hooks Christian, but while she is not interested, he is in “love”.  He is still in love with Barbara although the physical side of their relationship is over.  Barbara is, in fact, happy that Christian should indulge this side with Leonora, even if Leonora is not.  In scenes Coward’s characters speak of but we never see, Christian apparently can’t help himself from psychoanalysing everything Leonora tells him and thus ruins her most precious memories.  Without ocular proof this is all far too difficult to believe.  Besides this, Coward wants the symbolically named Christian’s conflict to represent the conquest of the mind by matter, with Leonora representing matter.  Rather than elation, Christian’s relationship leaves him in a profound state of depression.  

Without fully realized backgrounds or psychologies for the characters or a consistent symbolism for the action, it is impossible to care about any of the characters.  Blair Williams and his fine cast do an excellent job of convincing us that at least they know and care about what it all means even if we don’t.  As Barbara, Laurie Paton conveys a sense of profound understanding to which we wish Coward would give us some access.  As Leonora, Claire Jullien plays the sly temptress who is tormented by the prize she wins.  David Jansen’s Christian is an enigma.  We understand the irony of a psychiatrist not understanding himself, but Coward makes Christian’s explanations excessively vague.  What Jansen does show is a man who inexplicably descends into the depths of depression when he glimpses an aspect of his inner self he finds repugnant.  This is a case where we can at least appreciate the talent of the actors involved even if Coward has not given us sufficient information to understand their actions.

After intermission, “Family Album” places us on much firmer ground.  The action is set in a drawing room in Kent in 1860.  The Featherways household is discover in deep, elaborate mourning.  The five Featherways siblings--Jasper, Lavinia, Harriet, Emily and Richard--three with their spouses, have gathered just after their father’s funeral.  Lavinia, who, unlike the rest, has never moved away from home seems hit the hardest and much of the comedy comes from the slightest reference to death or to the grave sending her into paroxysms of weeping.  The others are not quite so hypersensitive and would rather down a few toasts.  After a bottle has been consumed moods lighten all round, even in Lavinia, and songs are sung and dances danced as a box of toys from the attic brings out the happiness the siblings once knew together when they were young.  The play concludes with shocking news from Lavinia followed by a general celebrations.

This is a highly enjoyable show, its mock seriousness serving as a useful restorative after the deadly seriousness of “The Astonished Heart”.  With eight actors on stage throughout the action, this is much more an ensemble piece like “Star Chamber” than a showcase for only two actors as so many of the “Tonight at 8:30” plays were intended.  The Noel Coward and Gertrude Lawrence parts are Jasper and Jane, but you would never really guess it from the overall effect.  The two characters who attract the most attention are Lavinia and the Featherways’ ancient butler Burrows.  Laurie Paton is really very funny as Lavinia.  You can already guess from the exaggerated nature of her grieving that “the lady doth protest too much”.  She charts Lavinia’s progress from uprightness to reluctant celebration to scandalous drunken revelation in delightful detail.  As Burrows, Michael Ball plays the most decrepit servant you’ve ever seen on stage.  His shaking, unsteady gait and stone-deafness seem to spell destruction, miraculously averted, for any objects in his care.  The four songs come as a surprise, especially the well-known waltz “Hearts and Flowers”, and help to heighten the strange unreality that pervades the piece.

Following one of the most ingenious set changes ever seen at the Court House Theatre, we shift from Victorian England to the very different comic world of the contemporary Côte d’Azur for “Ways and Means”.  Husband and wife Toby and Stella Cartwright (the Coward and Lawrence roles) are discovered in bed deeply perturbed about their future.  They are guests in the home of a fabulously wealthy woman but have gambled away all of their money to the extent that they don’t even have enough to tip the servants when they leave, and it is clear that Olive, their hostess, requires their departure soon to make room for new guests.  To ask Olive for a loan would be too humiliating and, these being upper class Brits, to find work is out of the question.  When all seems lost, their saviour arrives in the unlikely form of a former valet turned cat-burglar.

The pacing is brisk, the dialogue witty and the amoral solution is part of the fun.  Claire Jullien and David Jansen are very funny as the financially challenged couple, he morose while she remains perky.  Patrick McManus is excellent as the burglar Stevens and Blair Williams draws much humour from his inbred sense of politeness to the Cartwrights despite his new vocation.  Lisa Codrington has a fine cameo as Olive, whose glamourous demeanour shows she could never understand the Cartwrights’ problem and Jenny Young has a hilarious walk-on as a demented Russian princess. 

Set designer Sue LePage and costume designer Judith Bowden have created three completely different looks for the three plays--sleek, moderne and metallic for “The Astonished Heart”; fussy, mouldy and trussed up for “Family Portrait”; sunny and flouncy for “Ways and Means”.  Bowden deserves special recognition for the Victorian fantasy of her costumes for “Family Portrait” that combine, leather, lace, zippers and numerous other fastenings to make the characters all look as if they were all discreetly into bondage.  Louise Guinand’s lighting matches the mood of each piece perfectly--bleak for the first, gloomy for the second and bright turning into pleasant moonlight for the last.

Blair Williams shows he has a full understanding of exactly the style that each piece requires.  He draws such strong, emotional performances from the cast in “The Astonished Heart” we almost forget the play’s weaknesses.  Luckily, that proviso is not necessary for the final two plays where Williams’ sense of invention only heightens the comedy.  If you have the patience, do see “Ways of the Heart” if only to marvel the extraordinary versatility of the Shaw company of actors in the first play.  Then sit back, relax and enjoy the unadulterated fun of the second two.  

©Christopher Hoile

Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.

Photo: Claire Jullien and David Jansen in Ways and Means. ©David Cooper.