Reviews 2011
Reviews 2011
✭✭✭✭✩
by J.M. Barrie, directed by Morris Panych
Shaw Festival, Festival Theatre, Niagara-on-the-Lake
July 9-October 29, 2011
“A Man’s Man”
J.M. Barrie’s The Admirable Crichton receives an extraordinarily inventive production at this summer’s Shaw Festival. Barrie satirical fable asks whether the class system, so dominant in Britain, is “natural” or an artificial production of civilization. It reaches a predictably ambiguous conclusion but along the way provides hilarious scenes of role reversals between masters and servants. Audiences will find many fascinating parallels between this play of 1902 and Barrie’s better-known Peter Pan of 1904.
When the play begins we meet the Earl of Loam in his Mayfair mansion observing one of his monthly teas in which both the masters of the house and the servants must treat each other as equals. Loam is of the firm opinion that class distinctions are artificial but that he must abide by them since society demands it. These teas are his one means of soothing his social conscience. No one except Loam actually enjoys these occasions, least of all his faithful butler Crichton, who feels that they could foment disorder in the hierarchy of servants below stairs and, if Loam’s views were generally adopted, would create chaos in society.
The views of master and servant are put to the test when Loam’s yacht, in the midst of a world-wide sailing adventure, is shipwrecked on a desert island. Loam has brought his three daughters, his nephew Ernest, the Reverend Treherne, Crichton and Crichton’s would-be fiancée Tweeny. As one might expect, the aristocrats, so used to sloth and indolence all their lives, have no clue how to survive, whereas the ever-resourceful Crichton, no longer bound by his obsequious position, takes matters into his own hands and teaches the others how to thrive in this alien environment. We see the other side of Barrie’s double-edged satire in the amusing Act 3, where a second social hierarchy has entrenched itself on the island with Crichton at the top.
The play itself is already fun enough, but director Morris Panych expands the dramatis personae to include a chorus of six animals (Wolf, Fox, Crane, Crow, Hedgehog and Hare) who narrate the events using Barrie’s stage directions for their text and sing songs at various intervals. This is really more of a good thing since Barrie’s stage directions are as amusing as his dialogue. Panych has moved the setting from 1902 to the 1920s for no apparent reason except that he likes the songs of that period which the chorus sings usually to cover scene changes but once, with Irving Berlin’s “Shakin’ the Blues Away”, to express Crichton’s feelings of freedom on the island.
The fact that this chorus is comprised all of denizens of England and not the island and are drolly costumed by Charlotte Dean as humans ready for a formal tea provides a witty commentary on the question of “nature” in the play while setting up the show as a kind of topsy-turvy Aesop’s Fables with humans rather than animals as the characters. Indeed, Ken MacDonald’s clever design makes the sets look as if hand-drawn and cut out of the paper used for notes for the play. This gives the effect of a stage-sized pop-up book, while the animals with their songs behind a row of footlights surround this fable with the aura of the music hall. Panych goes one step too far in beginning the show with projected credits as if it were a movie, a technique he has used too often before and not always appropriately. It would be much more in keeping with the music hall theme to use title cards on easels rather than to add one more medium to the mix.
The play is a treat for actors since they get to play the characters in two completely different environments. Steven Sutcliffe is truly admirable as Crichton, the character with the greatest journey to make. We see his thoroughly stiff and proper self in Act 1 blossom in the new freedom he has in Act 2 even using his wits against his former masters. In Act 3 his success at survival seems to have brought along more questionable traits like egotism and ostentation. Act 4 finds him and all the other shipwreck survivors awkwardly trying to re-adjust to expected social norms in England. Sutcliffe particularly shines here in showing how Crichton must consciously bury knowledge of his past superiority and glory beneath everyday formalities.
Nicole Underhay is delightful as Lady Mary, a purposeless and disdainful creature in England who gains purpose and a sense of self-worth on the island. Her difficulty in adjusting in Act 4 and her attempts to forget her relationship with Crichton on the island provide most of the tension of the conclusion.
David Schurmann is wonderfully pompous as the Earl of Loam. Not only does the island bring out the hypocrisy of his supposedly progressive views but reveals a talent for abject subservience. Kyle Blair has a fine comic turn as Ernest, likely modelled on the character in Oscar Wilde’s best-known play, who occupies his time spouting epigrams and doing nothing whatsoever. Neither aristocratic ability is of any use on the island as he soon discovers.
Moya O’Connell and Cherissa Richards plays Lady Mary’s sisters Lady Catherine and Lady Agatha, who are even more vain and idle than she is. Their humiliation on the island, like Ernest’s, is one of the many comic rewards of the middle two acts. Marla McLean plays one of the few characters who is not a caricature. Tweeny is a low level maid who just does odd and ends, but she has a spark of wit and an immediate likability that distinguish her from all the others servants. It’s no wonder Crichton is drawn to her despite her untidiness and that we sympathize so strongly with her when his attentions drift away from her to Mary. As Lady Brocklehurst, Gabrielle Jones does her best to convey in a rather short time the supreme imperiousness of this diabolus ex machina, clearly patterned after Wilde’s Lady Bracknell, who forces the conclusion of the play. Ideally, however, the role should be played by someone older and made up to look less attractive and much more forbidding.
The Admirable Crichton is like a Peter Pan for adults. The dominance of upper over the lower class in Crichton is replaced by the dominance of adults over children in Pan. After the curtain calls the play finishes with a rousing reprise of “Shakin’ the Blues Away” by the whole company, which perfectly describes how the show will affect any audience, young or old.
©Christopher Hoile
Note: This review is a Stage Door exclusive.
Photo: Nicole Underhay, David Schurmann and Steven Sutcliffe. ©2011 David Cooper.
For tickets, visit www.shawfest.com.
2011-08-08
The Admirable Crichton